


Season Tickets

by shuofthewind



Series: Strangeness and Charm [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The X-Files
Genre: Alien Abduction, Aliens, Alternate Universe - X-Files Fusion, Blood and Injury, F/M, Grant Ward Is A Villain, Human Experimentation, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mental Institutions, Mystery, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, some torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-09 21:15:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 51,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7817512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuofthewind/pseuds/shuofthewind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"Why are those like yourself, who believe in the existence of extra-terrestrial life on this earth, not dissuaded by all the evidence to the contrary?"</em>
</p><p> </p><p><em>"Because all the evidence to the contrary is not entirely dissuasive."</em> </p><p>[FBI Agent Darcy Lewis has a mission. SHIELD Liaison Matt Murdock isn't quite sure where he fits, but he's willing to find out. The X-Files AU.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning: by "body modification" I don't mean anything particularly obviously grotesque, but rather chipping human beings? Though there are some torture elements. If you've seen _The X-Files_ pilot, we're good. The rest of the tags cover content pretty easily.

The J. Edgar Hoover Building in DC smells like printer ink and stale coffee, and even three hours into his new assignment, he’s still not entirely sure he’s in the right place. Oh, he knows he’s in the right place—the right room, the right office, the right address, all of it—but Matt’s kind of uncertain as to whether or not he’s really supposed to be here.

“Old Academy friend called in a favor,” Coulson had said. In spite of everyone he’s talked to, everyone he’s met, Matt’s still not entirely sure what Coulson’s official title at SHIELD is. Unofficially they call him the head of the Special Investigative Division, though he acts more as a distant supervisor than anything; at times he’s so hands-off as to be nearly invisible. The tactic wouldn’t work with any section other than theirs, mostly because if anyone tries to manage Jessica Jones in any sense, she breaks walls. “They need someone to keep an eye on one of their agents for the long-term. Obviously, I thought of you.”

Matt leans back in his chair, and cocks an eyebrow. “As flattering as that is, I’m not sure I’m exactly what the FBI would be looking for.”

“The Assistant Director’s been apprised of your circumstances.”

He turns that over in his mind for a moment. _Circumstances_ only ever mean one thing with Coulson. “And they’re still comfortable with me transferring in?”

“Hand used to be SHIELD,” says Coulson. “This isn’t the first time she’s had to handle people with…unique points of view. Besides, with Jones out of commission for the next six months with the baby, and Cage and Rand on assignment in Brooklyn, the last thing I need is you kicking your heels looking for something to do.”

“By long-term, you mean, what, six months? Five years?”

“A year, on paper. In reality, long-term means whatever the hell Hand wants it to mean.” Coulson’s mouth quirks. “When you meet her, tell her I appreciate her taking you off my hands. There’s only so much jurisprudential philosophy a man can take without going postal.”

He says it with a straight face, but there’s a creak to his breathing that means he’s trying not to laugh. Matt leans back in his chair. “You know I only do that to spite you, sir.”

“You’re due at the FBI tomorrow morning, eight AM.” says Coulson. “Now—get the hell out of my office.”

Regardless of Hand and her level of experience with _unique points of view_ , he’s pretty sure that when these FBI agents had heard “temporary SHIELD liaison,” they’d been expecting someone slightly different. It’s like joining the SHIELD Academy all over again, the whispers of _blind_ and _how_ and _what the hell is the Director thinking_. (There’s soundproofing on this place, in these walls, but he can hear through it, even if it’s muffled, and there are hundreds of voices here, hundreds of hearts and thousands of lungs, voices and machines echoing from every direction—) He stands beside the entrance to the Assistant Director’s office, and waits. _A year,_ Matt thinks, and curls his fingers around his long cane. He can manage a year, he’s fairly certain. Especially if Hand has something for him to actually do, as opposed to standing around as a human tape recorder.

Victoria Hand is shorter than him, but her heartbeat is steady as a rock, and her handshake (because she does shake his hand, holding hers out with an increasingly pointed _I know what you’re doing and it’s not gonna fly_ expression until Matt has no choice but to take it) is firm and no-nonsense. “Coulson says you’re good,” she says, once she’s directed him into the office and shuts the door behind them. “I’m hoping he’s not exaggerating to me again.”

“It depends on what I’m here for,” Matt says. Hand glances back at the door, which she’s shut. There’s gunpowder residue clinging to her hands, and the smell of a shooting range hangs in the air. “Agent Coulson wasn’t particularly forthcoming about it.”

“At least he’s learned how to keep his mouth shut since the Academy.” Hand looks at him for a moment. “In the next five minutes there will be men in this office giving you any number of instructions as to the purpose of your assignment. What I need you to do is different.”

Matt lifts his eyebrows, and waits.

“Tell me,” Assistant Director Hand says. “What, if anything, have you heard about the X-Files?”

“Only vague things. Some of them have wound up on SHIELD’s radar, if only as potential curiosities. Unsolved cases for the most part. I met a transfer once who called it an FBI agent’s graveyard.”

He can’t quite tell what kind of face Hand is making. Her mouth twists. “Close enough. The X-Files are cases which contain inexplicable phenomena. For obvious reasons, most of these have been classified as unsolved.”

“Classified as unsolved,” Matt repeats. “Not unsolved?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” She scowls again. “Regardless of their actual definition, there have been certain…elements, higher in the chain of command, which in the past six months or so expressed much more interest in this supposed graveyard than seems completely normal. When I ask why, I run up against red tape.”

Matt presses his lips tight together for a moment. “Forgive me for saying this, but that seems like more of an internal matter. Why do you need me?”

“Coulson may be half the agent he used to be before he took on the SID, but he has a flair for picking out extraordinary talents. From what I heard about you, you were on your way to Columbia Law when SHIELD headhunted you. Graduated with honors from the Academy. Not the highest marks in its history, but damn good nevertheless. You’re talented, if the way half your file is blacked out is any indication. And that’s not to mention the work you’ve done. You’ve closed some big cases, Agent Murdock. Made a lot of people nervous.”

He’s careful to keep his face straight. “I try to be good at my job.”

Hand circles around behind her desk, drops into her chair, and rests her thumb to a small scanner laid into one of the drawers. It seems too high-tech for the bureaucracy of the FBI to have managed, so he’s pretty sure this is something she installed herself. “Good. What I want you to do isn’t especially complicated. Whatever these unknown parties want with the X-Files, whatever they’re looking for, I want you to find it first. Discretely, for obvious reasons.”

Well. He certainly won’t be standing around stapling files. “You want me undercover in the FBI.”

“Not undercover so much as underground.” She lifts her eyebrows at him. “Does that surprise you?”

“I would have thought dealing with moles and internal conspiracies was something more suited to the Cold War.”

“Some things cling on.”

That’s…irritatingly unhelpful. “How exactly am I supposed to do that without them noticing? If I start poking around, they’ll probably realize what I’m there for.”

“I highly doubt they’d even notice if _you_ start poking around,” Hand says, strangely amused. “But that part’s been taken care of.”

“I’m going to need a little more than that.”

“I’m sure they’ll explain it to you when they get here.” She draws a tablet from the drawer, and looks up at him through her bangs. “You’re dismissed, Agent Murdock. Do me a favor and don’t mention this to anyone. We never met, we never spoke. In fact,” she adds, standing again, shifting towards a side door, “I’ve never seen you before in my life. Is that understood?”

Matt opens his mouth. Then he closes it, and nods.

She has her hand on the doorknob when Hand clears her throat.

“Murdock?”

He turns.

“Welcome to the Bureau,” Hand says. The corners of her mouth lift. It’s more like a razor than a smile. “Try not to die.”

.

.

.

The door opens. There are six people in the room, now. Four men, two women. They remain apart from each other, carefully out of reach of their companions, and the well-manicured man wonders if this is because they trust each other as little as they do themselves. For a long moment, the man in the sharp suit (the well-manicured man knows this man’s name, his history, but in this room, those facts are irrelevant, meaningless intricacies for a world that has no importance to any of them) stands in the doorway. Then he steps inside, and the door shuts and locks automatically behind him.

“I still think this is a reckless idea,” says the man in the sharp suit, utterly without preamble, as is his wont.

“Of course you do,” says the smoking man. He sits while the other five stand, tapping a second cigarette against the box. The first is nothing but a stub in the ash tray. “You believe every idea is reckless. Interesting, considering your history.”

“I did not claim my current position through acting in haste,” snaps the man in the sharp suit. “By offering her legitimacy, you make her dangerous.”

“She was already dangerous,” says the woman in white. “Doing this—it makes her _venomous_.”

The smoking man stops tapping. “Would I be correct in assuming that the pair of you would prefer to withdraw your consent from this operation?”

There’s a long, breathless silence.

“No,” says the woman in white, slowly. “No, I will remain.”

The smoking man pulls a lighter from his pocket, snaps the catch. He draws a breath of smoke, watching the room. The man in the sharp suit scoffs.

“I will as well,” he says. “Though this plan goes against my better judgment.”

“Noted,” says the smoking man. He looks to the woman in white. “Explain your reticence, if you don’t mind.”

The woman in white crosses the room, touches her fingertips to the bookshelf. She does not look at any of the others. “You’re giving her free rein to go after whichever case she wants. Not only that, you’re giving her a partner. One woman hiding herself away in the basement is explicable, is dismissible, but handing her a pair of willing ears—that’s an offer of legitimacy. The amount of damage that she can do on her own is minimal. If there are two? It could be astounding.”

By the globe, the woman with blue eyes scoffs. “Have you ever gone down there? Taken a look at the files? You vastly overestimate the amount of information that’s available for the little bitch to put together. There would be even less of it available if we’re all sure to do our jobs, _properly_.” The man in the sharp suit hisses through his teeth, long and slow, like a viper. The woman with blue eyes ignores it superbly. “No, this is the safest course. She’ll put her head into the noose quite willingly. We may not have to do anything at all.”

“That’s taking an overly positive perspective on things, don’t you think?” says the well-manicured man mildly, and he congratulates himself when everyone bristles at everyone else.

“All of you are being ridiculous,” says the dark man. Out of all of them, he has always been the most difficult to fool. Today is no different. “We decided this would be the subtlest way to rid ourselves of Agent Lewis. Let her discredit herself. She does it quite well in court already, if her last visit to the witness stand is any indication.”

The man in the sharp suit narrows his eyes. “You’re giving her a voice.”

“We’re giving her a snake in the grass,” corrects the woman with blue eyes. At the window, the well-manicured man turns his back on them all, staring out into the parking lot. “If he lives up to the hyperbole.”

“He ought to,” says the man in the sharp suit. Judging by his voice, he finally seems to have collected himself. “That’s assuming, at least, that Hand is as trustworthy as you claim she is.”

“She knows where to look,” says the smoking man. “And if she forgets, I will be there to remind her.”

They all fall silent after that. There’s nothing left to say.

.

.

.

He supposes, considering the meeting with Hand, he should have been expecting something like this. Still, it’s a fight to keep his voice steady. “You want me to spy on this woman.”

“That’s a little melodramatic, don’t you think?” says the man with the cigarettes. He taps ash into a tray. Matt’s fairly sure he brought it in with him. He’s also fairly sure that he’s breaking a few of the building codes by smoking in the section chief’s office, but nobody says a word about it. “You have a reputation for good attention to detail, Agent Murdock. Not only that, you’re logical. You care about keeping things even, about objectivity. Integrity, I suppose you could call it.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“We would like you to ascertain the viability of the X-Files program through observing and participating in Agent Lewis’s investigations,” says Section Chief Gonzalez. “Report back to us on the validity of the casework, and on the sustainability of the project. Depending on how the situation progresses, we may negotiate for a renewal of the liaison contract.”

“So—” Matt tips his head. “Basically, you want me to…disprove hitherto inexplicable phenomena, while evaluating one of your own agents.”

“We called you in from an outside organization in order to ensure your objectivity in the matter.” Gonzalez steeples his fingers. “If you feel that you are incapable of performing this task, Agent Murdock, we can always assign someone from our own department, instead.”

In the corner of the room, Hand digs her fingernails hard into her palms. Neither Gonzalez nor the man with the cigarettes is looking at her, but the noise her skin makes when it splits beneath her nails digs into his ears. _A year_ , he thinks again. He really might be in the wrong place.

“No,” Matt says. “No, I’ll do it.”

“Excellent,” Hand says, briskly. Someone knocks on the door. ( _Female_ , he thinks, _five-seven, footsteps light, silent, well-trained, and she’s armed for war, this one, even in her home territory, I’d hate to go up against her in the field—_ ) “That will be Agent Carter. Is that all we need to discuss today, gentlemen, or would you prefer a demonstration before he goes?”

The man with the cigarettes scoffs, and turns his back. Section Chief Gonzalez seems to be grinding his teeth. “That will be unnecessary,” he says, from behind Hand’s desk. “Come in.”

The door opens. The woman—Agent Carter—pauses on the threshold. She bites the inside of her cheek, her eyes flicking from Matt to Hand to Gonzalez. She pointedly does not look at the man with the cigarettes. “You sent for me, ma’am.”

“Yes, I did.” Hand doesn’t uncross her arms. “Carter, take Murdock down to the basement storage. He’s been assigned to the X-Files for the time being.”

Carter goes stiff. She bites at her tongue. The _whys_ and _what the hells_ are practically vibrating off her, but when she finally speaks, all she says is, “Of course. This way, Agent Murdock.”

“Sorry to ask this.” He raises his cane, and Carter stills again, blinking. “Too many desks. Do you mind if I—?”

“Oh.” She looks at Hand again, eyebrows creeping high. “Of course,” she says a second time, and when Matt turns and holds out one hand, she hooks it through her elbow without a word. She’s muscular enough that she has to practice some kind of sport on a regular basis, probably hand-to-hand combat. A variety of styles, he thinks, especially considering the weaponry in play. He’s tempted to flip her, and see which she goes for first, the gun under her left arm, the gun in her ankle holster, or the knife stashed in the small of her back. He doesn’t. It wouldn’t necessarily be the best impression to make, first day at a new office. Plus, he’s fairly sure she’d break his nose on her way down.

“So,” she says, once they’ve hit the elevator and Matt lets go of her arm. “You’re down in the basement with Spooky, huh?”

This is new. “Spooky?”

“That’s right, you’re a liaison.” She blows air out through her nose. “Lewis is nice, really. She was in the Civil Rights division, worked with the human trafficking committees for the most part. Started making a name for herself in deep cover circles, until she petitioned Hand to have her transferred down to the X-Files two years ago. She doesn’t get many mainstream cases anymore.” Carter considers. “The newbies call her the Groundhog. Chitchat is that if you see her, your workload’s gonna double.”

“I thought you said she didn’t get cases.”

“Not regular ones, no.” She glances at him again, debating. “She gives herself cases. Usually pointless ones.”

“Pointless?”

Carter flushes. “Well—no. That was disingenuous. We went to the Academy at the same time, me and Lewis. She’s a good agent. She could have been a really great one. But instead of breaking up trafficking rings and hunting down serial killers she’s buried herself in the basement with Bigfoot and the Jersey Devil.”

He can’t think of what to say. He listens to the rattle of the elevator shaft, the ringing of metal against metal. “Sounds like it’d be tricky to prosecute cases like those.”

Carter (she’s been holding herself still through sheer stubbornness, but there’s a buzzing, frustrated energy in her that’s making the muscles in her arms twitch) huffs out loud. “It’s not just tricky, it’s _pointless._ It’s a road to nowhere, and Hand is just—” She stops. “That was unprofessional. I apologize. I didn’t mean to imply that the Assistant Director has made the wrong choice. In my opinion, Lewis could be doing better things with her time than reading the _National Enquirer._ That’s all.”

“Don’t worry.” Matt lifts his face to the ceiling. There’s a camera in the northwest corner of the elevator. “It’s not like I have anyone to tell.”

Carter shifts her weight away from him. “Honestly? I don’t know why they’re putting you down here. As a liaison, you probably have better things to do than handle Lewis and her wild goose chase.”

 _Because apparently, the stuff no one else believes in is the stuff that’s worrying the government most._ Or, at least, worrying the FBI the most. “I’m immune to groundhog syndrome,” he says. “You have to see her to have a bad workload. They figured it was safe to stick me down here.”

Carter makes a strangled noise, and lifts a hand to her mouth. “If you say so.”

“That’s my theory, anyway.” The elevator door opens. “Which way do I go?”

She wavers. “You sure you don’t need me to—”

“I’m good with directions,” Matt says, and smiles. Carter’s ears go hot. “Don’t worry about me. Which way am I going?”

“Left here,” she says. “Just follow the hallway all the way down to the end. No turns. Last door on the right.”

“Thanks,” Matt says, and turns away before the elevator doors slide shut.

It wouldn’t have been hard to find the right office, even without directions. It’s the only place down here with a human still inside, a heartbeat and movement and the click of computer keys. Still, he’s careful to use his cane all the way down the hallway, even though he knows for a fact that he’s the only person here, other than Agent Spooky. (—two cameras, one covering the eastern corridor, one covering the west, whirring quietly from behind what are probably supposed to be fire alarms—) There’s an iPod playing, something from _Swan Lake_. (—the hum of tiny machines inlaid into the walls, listening devices, he thinks, though there’s no way to tell without peeling away the shields of the electrical sockets and digging in with his fingernails _—_ ) He raps on the door with two knuckles.

“Enter the unbeliever.”

He can tell even before the door sticks against a half-emptied file box that the office is a mess. There are two desks, but the piles of folders and of old office supplies have spilled from one onto the other, like some kind of mudslide. An old TV hunches in the corner, dusty and unplugged. The whole place reeks of old ink and musty paper, crammed with ancient filing cabinets and projection equipment better suited to a century gone by. There’s even a VCR player, which is something he hasn’t seen since he was five years old. The only modern tech in the whole place is the laptop on the table, the portable DVD player, and the light laid into the wall for reading X-rays. Lewis is perched on the edge of her desk with a pencil shoved through her hair, twisting a Rubik’s cube between her hands. When Matt opens the door, she goes very still.

She smells like honey, he realizes. Honey shampoo and sunflower seeds.

“I think you’re in the wrong place,” she says, finally. Her eyebrows have snapped together. “You’re _far_ too put-together to wind up down here in the Land of Misfit Toys.”

“You’re Agent Lewis?”

“Depends. Who’d you piss off to get tossed down the garbage chute, flyboy?”

It takes him a second to process that. When he does, though, Matt bites his tongue to keep from smiling. “Agent Lewis, I’m Matt Murdock. I’m a liaison with SHIELD. And I don’t think I pissed anyone off.”

“You sweet summer child, you wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t.” She tips her head the other way, and then slips off the desk. Standing, she’s about five foot three, though she’s wearing heels that add an inch or two. She puts her hands on her hips, considering. “You don’t really look like SHIELD.”

“Can’t say I’ve been told that before.”

“Well, now you can.” She hits a button on the iPod, and _Swan Lake_ fades out. “What exactly are you doing here, Agent Matt Murdock, special liaison of SHIELD? Someone send you down to check out the zoo exhibit?”

“Assistant Director Hand requested that I assist you, actually.”

Her heartbeat’s picked up, but not because of fear, he doesn’t think. Confusion, maybe. Or excitement. “Keep watch on me, you mean,” she says. “It’s okay. I forgive you. Well, sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“SHIELD and I have never been on the best of terms.” Lewis crosses to the TV, and hits a button on the cheap DVD player. There are two more listening devices in the ceiling, another in the nearest cabinet. Matt taps his cane against the metal, listening to the echo. _Does she know they’re there?_ “Hand assigned you to the X-Files?”

“Section Chief Gonzalez made the official request. I think that’s his name.”

“You are correct, sir.” Lewis hits the eject button, whacks the top of the DVD player when it doesn’t immediately obey, and then shuffles some things around to plug the TV in. “Remind me to send him a Hanukkah present.”

Jewish, then. Her accent isn’t worth remarking on, but the rhythm of her voice—southern, he thinks. She talks fast and slow all at once, molasses crammed into a moment. When she passes him again to dig through a drawer, she gives the electrical outlet on the wall a wide berth. _She knows,_ he thinks. She knows she’s being listened to. And if they already have so many eyes on this woman, already have audio and video, what the hell do they need him for?

 _Outside information_ , he thinks, before he’s even finished asking himself the question. _Observation at close quarters. Picking her brain where they can’t._

_But why?_

She’s unlocked the drawer and is paging through the files with her thumb when she says, “Hey, are you a mutant?”

Matt blinks again. “I’m sorry?”

“Blind guy working as a SHIELD special liaison with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, assigned to the X-Files to keep tabs on me? What else could you be?” The file she yanks out is about the same thickness as his thumb, and there’s a CD taped to the inside. She yanks that free, tosses the file on top of the cacophony on her desk, and heads back to the TV again. “And seriously, no hard feelings about that, by the way. The keeping tabs. You’re doing your job, even if it’s for SHIELD.”

“I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about,” Matt says easily, smiling. In the fire alarm on the ceiling, the pin-sized camera buzzes away. Lewis gives him a long, careful look, and then shrugs.

“Never mind. If you’re really going to stick around, I’ll figure out who you are and what you can do.”

He’s not entirely certain if he should laugh. “If I stick around?”

“Pretty big if.” Lewis bounces back up onto her desk again, and hits a button on the remote. She’s watching the TV, now, not him, but every part of her is hyperfocused. A test, maybe. “And that’s not even the most important question.”

“Which is?”

“Tell me, SHIELD Spook,” she says. On the TV, someone starts to scream. “Do you believe in aliens?”

.

.

.

“Aliens,” repeats the SHIELD agent, and doesn’t smile. He doesn’t frown, but he doesn’t smile, either. “As in, extra-terrestrials.”

“If we’re talking _E.T., phone home_ , no.” Darcy watches him. He’s cool as a cucumber, this SHIELD agent. Usually she gets them twitching a lot faster than this. Though, to give herself a bit of credit, she hasn’t started in on vaginal probing, yet. “The idea of little green men arriving from outer space is a bit outdated, but the general concept is the same. Do you believe in the existence of intelligent life outside of our solar system?”

“It’s impossible to say for sure,” says the SHIELD agent, slowly. “Though—if intelligent life _does_ exist somewhere in this universe, then the idea of that race of beings traveling hundreds or hundreds of millions of lightyears simply to capture, study, and experiment upon our species for decades—or centuries, even—is ludicrous.”

Darcy can’t help it. She grins. On the TV, Jemma Simmons keeps right on screaming. “Huh.”

“You sound surprised,” says the SHIELD agent. He taps his cane again, against a different cabinet this time.

“Takes more than that to surprise me, flyboy.” She folds her legs up underneath her (she’s wearing slacks today, she can do these things) and watches him investigate. He’s doing it pretty subtly, but he’s still investigating, sketching out the line of the office with his cane. He stops beside the unoccupied desk, his head still cocked. He doesn’t have any obvious mutations, and when she sneaks a peek out of the corner of her eye, there’s nothing abnormal about his eyes. She looks away, back to the screen. “The woman in this video is named Jemma Simmons. She’s English. Lives in Washington, DC. Three Ph.D.’s before she turned twenty. Funnily enough, she’s also a SHIELD agent.” Darcy tips her head. “You know her?”

“SHIELD is enormous,” says the SHIELD agent. _Murdock_ , she thinks. _Agent Matt Murdock._ Who is, apparently, supposed to work X-Files with her for the next year. _Agent Matt Murdock, special liaison of SHIELD._ And assigned to the X-Files. Spy. Definitely a spy. And probably an X-File all on his own. “It would be impossible to meet everyone. I’ve heard of Dr. Simmons, though. She went to the SHIELD Science Academy, graduated a year after I was made full agent. The word people would use for her was typically _extraordinary._ ”

“Considering all three of her doctoral theses are on biochemical and anatomical phenomena I can’t even begin to pronounce, I’ll agree with that. Point is, she’s a brilliant scientist as well as a SHIELD agent. She’s not supposed to be easily flapped.”

“Lack of flap is the general rule,” says SHIELD Spook.

Was that a joke? She thinks that might have been a joke. Darcy looks at him for a moment, and bites the inside of her cheek to keep her lips from twitching. “This video was taken thirteen days ago at the psychiatric hospital just outside of Lakewood, Washington, where Dr. Simmons was admitted a full month ago for what for all intents and purposes seemed to be complete psychological degeneration. According to the orderly, before this, Dr. Simmons hadn’t spoken a word or acknowledged another human being in the entire time of her stay.”

SHIELD Spook presses his lips together. On the TV, Dr. Simmons keeps on keeping on. “Victims of psychological trauma having sudden, inexplicable breaks isn’t unheard of.”

“No, it’s not. But it still makes you think.”

He shifts his grip on his cane. “What was she doing in Washington State?”

“Research, apparently. Dr. Simmons was the only remaining survivor of a team of six. According to the official report, the team had been posted to the Cascades in order to survey a piece of land that the American government recently acquired and intended to turn into a DoA biological preserve. Considering Dr. Simmons is SHIELD, I have a healthy amount of doubt on that score.” SHIELD Spook doesn’t twitch. Darcy looks back to the TV, and pauses the disk. “About a month ago, the outpost stopped submitting their daily video reports. When search and rescue teams went out there to survey the situation, Dr. Simmons was the only one still alive.”

“They were dead?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” Darcy tucks her hair behind her ears. “All five of the other scientists have since been discovered in the surrounding woods, suffering from various stages of decomposition. Most of them were burned to a crisp.”

“Arson?”

“Nope. Electrocution, according to the coroner. Though he’s still stuck on the how.” She’s smug as anything when she says, “Apparently, four out of the five researchers killed were struck by lightning out of a clear sky.”

SHIELD Spook turns his cane between his hands. For the first time, she thinks, she’s surprised him. “And the fifth corpse?”

“Technically with that one cause of death was exsanguination. His throat was punctured with something long and thin, like a knitting needle. But—” She shuts the file. She’s read this part often enough that she has it memorized. “Ninety bones in that body were shattered without any trace of external trauma. The coroner report says that it’s as if someone detonated the bones from the marrow out.”

Agent Special Liaison considers that for a time. Darcy pops the DVD back out of the drive. “How did you hear about this?”

“Late birthday present. Someone shoved it under my door.” She waits. “You have a professional opinion yet, Agent Murdock of SHIELD?”

“I don’t exactly have a degree in medicine, but having bones burst from the inside doesn’t sound like something that could happen naturally.” Murdock shrugs. “Maybe some kind of accident with their survey equipment? Though it would depend on what exactly they were surveying.”

She’s kind of tempted to pat his cheek and say, _you poor, unfortunate soul._ “Well, you’ll get a chance to nose around the equipment out at the survey station as much as you want. We’re catching a flight out tomorrow morning. Apparently nothing out there has been touched in the full month since Dr. Simmons was found cowering in the back closet, essentially comatose.”

“That seems sloppy.”

“There was supposed to be a clean-up, apparently. The local police sent a team out to take a look at the place, and well—” her lips quirk “—it was just too damn spooky for them to stay.”

Agent Murdock goes quiet again. It’s only once Darcy’s unearthed the plane tickets from the mound of paperwork on her desk that he tips his head to the side, ever so slightly. “And your theory is extra-terrestrials?”

“My theory’s a bit more complicated than that, actually, but I won’t know for sure if I’m right until we get there.” She smacks the tickets into his hand. “Bright and early, SHIELD Spook. Seven-thirty AM flight. I can pick you up.”

His mouth twists. “I can catch a taxi.”

“Fine, if you want to pay an obnoxious amount of money to get out to Dulles that early in the morning, be my guest.” She shrugs. “No skin off my nose, Super Spy.”  

“I thought I was SHIELD Spook.”

“You’re whatever you want to be, Agent Murdock, Special Liaison.”

Murdock smooths his thumb over the edge of the unsealed envelope. Then he slips it into the inside pocket of his jacket. He seems to want to say something, at least, judging by the way the corners of his mouth keep twitching (and he has a nice mouth, does Special Liaison Murdock, very pretty) but finally, he decides to keep it to himself. “Seven-thirty flight to—Seattle?”

“Not a direct, unfortunately. Dulles to O’Hare to SeaTac. Then a rental car out to Lakewood Psych to see the good Dr. Simmons, and another four hour’s drive north to get to the survey station.” She waves her fingers as if she’s throwing confetti. “Welcome to the modern age, where everything takes forever and all anyone wants to do is sell you something.”

He huffs again. “Do the local PD know we’re coming?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“Matter of opinion.” Darcy drops back down into her chair, and opens her computer. Murdock still hasn’t really moved from his spot by the buried desk. She should probably start moving files around to clear a space for him, but she doesn’t particularly want to. Not for a spy, anyway. “You glued there or what?”

Murdock tips his head just so to the side, the way a cat does when it spots a bird. “You really don’t trust anyone, do you?”

“Nope. I joined a club. They even gave me a poster.” She pushes her glasses up her nose. “What do you care?”

“I don’t, really.” He shrugs. “Just a sad way to live.”

She looks at him for a long time, wondering. “Speaking from experience?”

Murdock goes still. He rolls his cane between his palms. “I have to go back upstairs to file some paperwork. Is there someplace I can put my things?”

“Probably, if you can un-bury the desk. It was like that when I claimed the office, honestly. I think I was the first person to come down here in fifteen years.”

He shrugs. “That’s okay. I don’t need much space.”

“That,” says Darcy, “sounds depressingly like foreshadowing.”

.

.

.

In the four hours it takes to shift all the files back into their appropriate drawers, he counts sixteen separate surveillance devices positioned in and around the basement office.

He’s really not sure what to do about it. If he dismantles them (which he’s tempted to do, because honestly, sixteen? _Sixteen_?) then the administration might catch wind of the fact that he’s not here to report on Lewis. If he leaves them there, then he’s going to have to watch himself a lot closer than he usually does, and that’s saying something.

(He wonders how long it’s going to take them to put bugs in his apartment, or if they already have bugs in hers. Wonders who signed off on bugging an employee of the US government, or if anyone did at all. Actually, he wonders a lot of things as he passes files and old papers with Lewis, back and forth. She’s fallen silent, thoughtful, watching him like she’s trying to pick him apart at the seams. _I’ll figure out who you are and what you can do._ That’s…unnerving. To say the least.)

More than that, there’s also the question as to what he should say to her about the surveillance. Or if he _should_ say anything. She already knows about at least two of the bugs (she’d leapt at the chance to move a filing cabinet in front of one of the bugged electrical sockets, and avoided the bugged cabinet as best she could) but he doubts she realizes exactly how much attention they’re paying her.

Matt sorts through the leftover post-its in the bottom drawer of his new desk, throwing most of them away, keeping a few just in case, and thinks: _Yeah. I’m really in the wrong place._

.

.

.

Darcy has a tendency to snap awake at three or four in the morning after a nightmare, and work until the sun comes up. So she’s on her fourth coffee by the time she parks at Dulles International and meets Murdock at the security checkpoint, rumpled a little despite her best efforts and with odd braids in her hair. (She braids it when she’s trying to focus, and sometimes it comes out strangely.) He looks like crap, and that’s putting it politely—there’s a bruise on his jaw that wasn’t there yesterday, and he’s hunched a little like he’s protecting his ribs—but when she says, “There you are,” he comes to attention without overt disgust, so that’s a small point in his favor. “How was your cab ride?”

“Obnoxious,” he says. She frowns at him for a moment—she hadn’t been able to sleep much last night, thinking about what the hell kind of ability a blind man would need to be a SHIELD agent, especially one with as many commendations as Matt Murdock—and then hooks her arm through his. If he’s going to keep up the pretense, she can at least help. Whatever he can do, there’s enough information blacked out in his file that she’s pretty sure it’s some kind of organizational secret on SHIELD’s part. Murdock shifts his duffel bag up over his shoulder, and adds, “Thanks.”

“Elevator or escalator?”

“Don’t care.”

They take the elevator, because Darcy’s not up to escalators at the moment. One of the flight attendants asks them at the gate if they’d like to board early, considering Murdock’s white cane is so damn obvious, and she leaves it up to him, still wondering. _Not telepathy_ , she decides, as Murdock smiles and thanks the attendant before gesturing at her to follow. _Nothing overtly obvious._ Judging by the list of cases he’s worked on—infiltration, mostly, deep cover cases with organized crime syndicates, which, _damn_ , she didn’t know SHIELD had those sorts of operations—there’s a lot more to what Murdock can do than meets the eye, even if he’s not talking about it.

“So,” she says, when they’ve settled in their seats (side-by-side; thanks, Cindy, this is _totally_ what she needed out of her travel stipend) and the rest of the passengers have begun their slow, grumbling filter onto the plane. “You ever been to Washington State before?”

“Once.” There’s a tinge of grey around his mouth, all of a sudden. “Couple of years ago. You?”

“I spent more time in the southwest than the PNW. But no, not the first time.” He has a black eye, too. She can see it from this angle. “What the hell happened to your face, by the way?”

“Slipped on the stairs last night. I’m fine. I have a thick skull.”

She’s just gonna let that one pass. She’s not up for teasing a spy this morning, and she doesn’t have the energy to call him on the lie of _I’m too blind to tell where I’m going._ Because even if his health evals say he _is_ blind, she very much doubts he’s the sort of person who’d trip and fall down a set of stairs. “You okay?”

Murdock nods, and falls quiet again. At least he’s not an awkward quiet, she thinks, as a woman with a sleeping baby settles in the row right behind them. If he were an awkward quiet, this would be even more terrible than it is.

 _You don’t make sense,_ she thinks, looking at him. It’s not just because of what he can or can’t do, either. He doesn’t make _sense._ She’d been expecting someone a lot more Rambo than this. All the other SHIELD agents she’s met in her life have been a) a lot bossier and b) far more interested in shutting people down than just letting them run wild. But that’s irrelevant.

_Why don’t you make sense?_

“You don’t think I’m crazy, do you,” she says, because she’s never seen the point of avoiding a topic that makes other people uncomfortable. Murdock curls his hands around the arms of his chair.

“Am I supposed to think you’re crazy?”

“Most people do.”

He shrugs. The plane disengages from the jetway, starts its slow reverse. “Most people also think that bats are blind, but that doesn’t mean that they’re right.”

She rolls that around for a moment. “Hm.”

He’s silent until they’ve hit the runway, until the plane starts picking up speed. “Different than what you expected?”

“A little. They didn’t actually tell me I was getting anyone until yesterday morning. Didn’t have a lot of time to process.” The plane lifts off the ground, and Murdock clenches his fingers hard into the chair. He shuts his eyes behind his glasses. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

He’s not, though. It’s about as obvious as a gut wound. “If you say so.”

“You know that they have you under surveillance,” he says. “Don’t you?”

Darcy stills. Wind shrieks over the wings. “I do,” she says, slowly. “But your bosses aren’t gonna be happy that you told me that.”

“They’re not my bosses.” He presses his lips together, breathes through his nose. All the strategies for dealing with a panic attack, none of the actual panic. “And no, I didn’t put them there. Before you ask.”

“I didn’t think you did. You might be SHIELD, but you’ve only been around for a day.” She watches him. “You didn’t have to tell me about them, though.”

“Yes, I did,” Murdock says. “Even if they’re legal, which I’m fairly certain they’re not, I’d rather not start off a year at the FBI by lying to the person they’ve assigned to be my partner. Or vice versa, as the case may be.”

And that’s…making things more confusing. “Did they tell you about them when you signed on?”

“No.”

“Then how’d you work it out?”

The corner of his mouth lifts. “Lucky guess. That, and I found one in the bottom drawer of my desk. You start knowing what they feel like, when you work with them long enough.”

“Uh-huh,” she says, because _that’s_ a story that makes total sense. “Was it video or audio?”

“How would I know that?” He shrugs. “Though, considering it was in the bottom of the desk, I’m thinking audio. If they’re thorough, there’ll be video feeds in the room somewhere, too.”

“There are.” She hates knowing that the basement office is being recorded, hates pretending that she doesn’t know it, but it’s easier to deal with the bugs she knows about then wrenching them all out of the walls and having them stick new ones in. “It’s like being on _Candid Camera._ ”

“That common procedure at the FBI? Should I be worried?”

“They save it for the crazy ones.”

The fasten seatbelt sign clicks off. Darcy roots around in her bag, yanks out her computer. It feels like she’s had a shot of epinephrine straight to her brain stem. _What the hell is your game, Murdock?_ She swipes her finger over the print scanner, types in the password. _Why rat out your bosses?_

“You don’t believe me,” he says, as the silence stretches on.

“Give me one good reason why I should,” she replies. “Considering you were sent to the X-Files to spy on me.”

“Of course I was,” he says, and she jolts in her seat, because _what the hell_.. “Realistically, though, I’d much rather figure out why they want you surveilled in the first place.”

She stares. “You’re serious.”

“Absolutely serious.” The woman with the baby in the row behind them curses under her breath, and knocks both her knees hard into the back of Darcy’s seat. “SHIELD doesn’t report to any one government. I don’t owe any allegiance to the FBI, or who’s backing them, whoever it is. I’m honestly more interested in why the Federal Bureau of Investigation is so worried about one agent rooting around in their unsolved case dump.”

“And that’s why you’re here,” she says, slowly.

“Is that so unbelievable?”

“I never believe anyone the first time. Professional courtesy.”

Murdock laughs. He smiles and laughs, and he looks almost startled about doing it, but the fact that he does it at all makes the hair on her nape stand up. “Take it or leave it. Doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

“So you were sent to spy on me, but you have no idea who bugged my office.”

“Presumably? It was the higher-ups who sent me to the basement in the first place. But there’s no proof of that, and they’ve more than likely covered up their tracks.”

Darcy scoffs, leaning back, staring at the seatbelt sign. Then she looks back at him. “You’re either a really good liar, Murdock, or a really bad one.”

“I’ve been told both.” He’s gone a bit grey, but the smile’s still there. “I’m guessing you still don’t believe me.”

“No, I do. I shouldn’t, but I do.”

This time he’s the one to go still, mouth twisting, confused. “Why?”

“Because even if I don’t want to believe you, you don’t have any reason to lie, either.” She wets her lips. “You were sent to spy on me and you just owned up to it, which, kudos, I didn’t peg you for the kind of guy who’d do that. You didn’t have to, but you did, and that counts for something. Besides—those bugs? The ones I found have been there for months. Long before you were ever a twinkle in Gonzalez’s eye, Agent Murdock. Though I never found the one in that desk.”

Murdock says nothing. He shifts around in his seat, tips his head at her, and it’s at just the right angle that she sees them. Scars. They’re nearly invisible, thin smearing marks across his temples, but they’re there. Remnants of something, she’s not sure. Like acidic tears. Darcy opens a few files on her computer, the report from the psychiatric hospital, an article about the research team. She has her copy of Murdock’s personnel report up, too, a dare to see if he notices. He hasn’t, so far, which rules out some kind of telepathic perception. Unless he’s being subtle about it. The longer she stays quiet, the shiftier he gets, until finally he says, “Why do you think they’re spying on you?”

“Who knows?” She eyes him sidelong. He’s gone from grey to green, and there’s sweat beading up on his forehead. _Is he claustrophobic?_ But no—he’d seemed fine in the elevator, in the crammed aisles of the FBI bullpen, in the back closet of the X-Files. He’s not frightened of flying, either, she doesn’t think; he would have been much more nervous before now if he was. Still: his knuckles shine white through his skin as he clutches at the arms of his chair. “I do a lot of things that make people grumpy.”

He huffs. “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”

Darcy taps her pen against the side of her computer screen a few times. “Are you okay?”

The corners of his mouth twitch up and down _,_ like he’s fighting a smile. “I’m fine. Planes and I don’t get along.”

It looks more like he’s going to puke all over his shoes. “You get airsick?”

“It’s just a headache.”

 _And I’m Freddy Kreuger._ Darcy rolls her earbuds between her palms. Then she taps the back of his wrist, and presses them into his hand. Murdock curls his fingers around them automatically, and turns towards her, tipping his head in a question. She can still hear AC/DC pumping through the tiny speakers.

“What are these for?”

“They’re called _headphones_ ,” she says, cocking an eyebrow at him. She’s still not certain he can’t see it. “You put them in your ears and music comes out.”

“I know what they are,” says Murdock, acidly. “I meant what are you giving them to me for?”

“I dunno. Thought it might help. Sometimes planes can be overwhelming. For me, anyway.”

He freezes, just for a moment. It’s barely more than a split second, the sliver of time between one heartbeat and the next, but he goes icy still, and _there_. Empathetic, she thinks. Something empathetic, or something sensory. He’s displayed no aptitude for metal or mechanics, nothing to do with elements or the laws of physics. (She’s seen those before, hunted people with those kinds of talents before; she likes to think she knows how to recognize the signs by now, even if it’s only been a day.) She thinks about what it would be like to be crammed in a plane with an ability like that, and bites the inside of her cheek.

 _So?_ She folds her hands in her lap, watching him. _What are you gonna do, SHIELD Spook?_

Murdock uncurls his fingers again, like he’s going to give the earbuds back. Then he nods, once, and raises the hand holding her headset in an awkward little salute. “I don’t—these should help.” He presses his lips together. “Thank you.”

It sounds genuine. She’s not entirely sure what to make of that. Darcy leans back in her chair, and an odd little flush of pleasure curls in her throat. It’s more than possible he’s just humoring her, but she doesn’t think that’s the case. The moment he hooks the earbuds in and asks, quietly, for her to turn the volume up (she had it on 33%, and he has her shift it to 64% before nodding and shutting his eyes behind his crimson glasses) something winds out of him, sand through a sieve. By the time they’ve been in the air twenty minutes, his hands have loosened up against the cheap fabric of the seat, and the pained lines around his mouth have faded.

 _Gotcha,_ she thinks, and goes back to her reports.

.

.

.

Matt’s been to Washington before, yes, but mostly he’d stuck to Seattle and the gangs that lurk in the international district, Chinese triads and the yakuza, so when they leave SeaTac in their rental car and drive in the opposite direction, it’s…interesting. They pass Boeing on the way out to Tacoma and Lakewood, and the scent of engine fuel makes his eyes burn even from the freeway. Still, Washington itself hasn’t changed all that much; it still smells like trees and water and the constant hanging moisture of rainfall, the sickly sweetness of rotting leaves and moss.

Lewis sets up her phone in the cup holder, follows GoogleMaps. Lakewood is more sprawling than Seattle is, less hilly. She doesn’t say much, aside from going over the more explicit details of the case one more time. Jemma Simmons, young genius, psychotic break (or trauma-induced waking coma), five others dead (one botanist, one geologist, one toxicologist, a geneticist for some reason, and a wilderness expert; he’d been the one with the broken bones); and a startling lack of investigation from any major organization, either in the United States or outside of it. “Washington State Police looked into it a little bit,” she says, plugging her phone into the car’s USB at a red light, “but they didn’t find anything. Signing officer’s a Grant Ward, detective, he’s who we’re meeting at the psych institution.”

“You ever talk to him before?”

“We’ve had long involved conversations in the dead of night about death fetishists and how we’re both addicted to Minecraft,” says Lewis flatly, but there’s a tick to her face that makes him think she might be smiling. “Nah, not overly much. Another cop in another tiny town, you know? He knows we’re coming. Oh—you probably shouldn’t mention that you’re from SHIELD, though. He applied a few years ago and wound up rejected. He might be bitter, and I want him to like us so he actually tells us the truth.”

That’s…slightly worrying. SHIELD has strict hiring policies, true, but generally rejections are for good reasons. “Did you happen to learn why?”

“Fascinatingly enough, his employment history didn’t come up in conversation.” She clicks her back molars together. “Something we should be worried about?”

“I don’t know.”

“What are you thinking?”

He rests his elbow at the base of the window. “I’m thinking that SHIELD usually has a good reason for turning people down.”

Lewis sits in thoughtful silence for about half of _Swan Lake_ ’s Suite, Op. 20. Then she says, “Good reasons like psychological reasons?”

“Maybe. Someone who demonstrates themselves to be psychologically unfit doesn’t generally wind up with the job.”

“Something to keep in mind.”

Lakewood Psychiatric Hospital is set aside from the rest of the city, tucked away down a long narrow road and shaded by an old growth pine forest. There’s a cop car already waiting in the parking lot (—drugs and sweat and blood and smoke, gunpowder and coffee, grating between the front seat and the back and an air freshener shaped like a pine tree hanging from the rear view mirror—) when Lewis puts them into park, and tugs her pea coat back on. It’s warmer here in Washington than it is in DC right now, but it’s still February, and it’s drizzling.

Detective Grant Ward is tall, early thirties at the most, well-kept even if he’s curled around a cup of coffee. He smells like he hasn’t showered in two days, and he’s been wearing the same uniform for about as long, but there’s an alertness to him that makes Matt think this is the man in his element, a hunter in its natural habitat. He stays light on his feet, keeps his center of gravity low, like he’s been trained. He perks up when Lewis gets out of the car, and his eyes linger on Matt for a second or two longer than necessary before he shifts his coffee around. “You the FBI agents?”

“Yep.” Lewis takes the offered hand. “I’m Lewis. This is Agent Murdock. Haven’t been waiting long, have you? We stopped to grab coffee, the flight out here was hellishly long.”

“No, just arrived a few minutes ago.” It’s a lie—Detective Ward’s car is long since cold, and his coffee is about the same temperature as a glass of water. He files that away. “Appreciate you coming all the way out from Washington for this.”

“Dr. Carver was a botanist with the Department of Agriculture. Generally we’re interested when government employees go up like a box of matches.”

Matt, who’d been sipping at his coffee, almost gags on it. He clears his throat once, and turns his face away when they both swivel around to look at him. Lewis’s mouth curves up, like she’s pleased about something. Ward coughs once, and says, “Well, obviously. The coroner is still confused about that, by the way.”

“We’ll want to talk to him eventually.” She jerks her head towards the facility. “Doctors know we’re coming?”

“They’re waiting inside with Dr. Simmons.” Ward glances back at Matt. “Ramp is this way.”

“There are stairs right here,” Lewis says, and hooks her arm through his again. He jumps, even though he knows it’s coming. Considering he’s fairly sure she thinks he’s faking—that, or she’s at least suspicious of what he can do—the fact that she just seems to have taken the idea in stride is…surprising. He’d say unnerving, but he’s not sure that he’s unnerved. Confused, maybe. But not unnerved. “Come on. The good doctor awaits our presence.”

The inside of the hospital isn’t much different from the inside of a person’s home. It’s all curling wood and heavy carpets. He counts twenty-seven heartbeats. A handful of them are slower than normal, as if they’ve been sedated. Others are faster, unsettled or uneven. There’s a bitter tang in the back of his throat that makes him think of old medicine and IV drips. A woman with long hair bound up tight at the back of her head pauses in a doorway, pushing a pair of reading glasses up her nose. “Detective Ward.”

“Doc,” says Ward. “This is Doctor Emma Frost, she’s the head of the hospital. Doctor Frost, these are the FBI agents I mentioned would be coming out. Lewis and Murdock. They just flew in from Washington.”

“Oh.” Frost blinks a few times. Then she settles. “Of course, I forgot. You did say they were coming, didn’t you.”

“I’m Lewis, he’s Murdock,” says Lewis, and shakes Frost’s hand without unhooking her arm from Matt’s. “Nice to meet you. Thanks for agreeing to see us on such short notice.”

“No trouble at all,” says Dr. Frost. She tucks her thumbs into the pockets of her cardigan. “It’s just—we don’t usually get the FBI out here, that’s all.”

Lewis smiles. She doesn’t say a word.

“We were hoping to speak with Dr. Simmons, if her supervising physician would be comfortable with it,” says Matt, refusing to pay attention to the fact that Ward keeps looking from his cane to his glasses to Lewis’s arm, over and over again, in a circle that he should long since be used to. “I’m assuming that’s you.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but Dr. Simmons isn’t in any sort of condition to be able to handle an interview at the moment. She’s been heavily sedated.” Frost lets air out through her nose, and darts a glance at Ward. “It’s that or keep her restrained. The last time someone went in to speak with her she used a chair to smash a window. She was halfway through it by the time Detective Triplett managed to drag her back inside.”

“She’s tried to escape?”

“Dr. Simmons is a sick woman, Agent Lewis. Two weeks ago you wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between her and a breathing automaton.” Frost pauses. “Forgive my candor, but I already had this conversation with Detective Ward, and I’m getting a little tired of repeating myself. Jemma Simmons isn’t in any space, physically or psychologically, to be able to discuss her trauma or anything else. Even if she was, I wouldn’t be comfortable with you interviewing her without me.”

“Of course not,” says Lewis, smoothly. “We’d be more than happy enough to wait for Dr. Simmons to recover a little more, but unfortunately we don’t have a lot of time. She’s our only witness to whatever happened up there in the woods, and yes, Dr. Frost, I understand that she’s not in the appropriate headspace to discuss it, but the fact is that she most likely has information that could set the course of the entire investigation. If we had any other options, believe me, I’d be willing to look at them, but it’s not as if I can bring one of those other scientists back from the dead to ask how they were murdered.”

Frost flinches. It’s minute, but it’s a flinch, and Matt can feel it like a static charge. He tightens his arm against Lewis’s for a moment. “We’ll be as gentle as we can, Dr. Frost,” he says, and next to him Lewis goes still. “And you’re more than welcome to sit in on the interview, hit the brakes if you feel that we’re pressuring. But we need to speak to Dr. Simmons. Otherwise we’ll be heading in blind.” He stops. “If you’ll pardon the expression.”

He thinks Dr. Frost might be biting back a bit of a smile. It fades almost as fast. “Detective Ward, can I have a word with you, please?”

Ward glances at Lewis and Matt before nodding once, and following Frost down the corridor. Lewis slips away from him to go and look at the photographs on the wall. (They’re taped up, and there’s no glass in any of the frames.) Matt turns his back to Ward and Frost, ears pricked.

“—particular reason you decided to bring the FBI down on my head?”

“Emma—”

“Don’t _Emma_ me, Grant Ward. I didn’t let you in so you decide to go above your bosses and mine and pull the feds into it. Even if I _were_ inclined to let them see Simmons, which I’m not—the last person who went into her room nearly had a pencil shoved in their eye, if you remember—”

“Yeah,” says Ward. “Because it was Trip’s eye.”

“So you of all people should know that you don’t just _call the government_ to get them to come out and do your dirty work for you! They’re the ones who sent her out to that damn lake in the first place, for Christ’s sake—”

“Dr. Simmons is an agent of SHIELD,” Ward says in a low, fierce voice. “Whatever she was doing up there, you really think it had anything to do with surveying land for a forestry preserve?”

Frost opens her mouth, and closes it again.

“I looked this Lewis woman up, Emma,” says Ward. “She might be able to give _both_ of us answers.”

“That woman upstairs isn’t a part of your damn fool crusade, Grant.”

“Will you stop being so stubborn about this? I need to talk to Simmons. They need to talk to Simmons. _Simmons_ probably needs to talk to Simmons, or at least come up out of the drug fog long enough to get a sense of where she is, what _month_ it is.” He stops. “Either you can make this easier on everyone or you can be charged with obstruction of justice, Frost. That’s what it’s come down to.” 

Frost clenches her hands into fists. She bares her teeth. “How _dare_ you—”

“Let us in, Dr. Frost,” says Ward. “We’re not asking.”

“—Murdock.” Lewis tips her head at him. “You okay?”

 _Dammit._ “I’m fine. Long flight.” He lifts the coffee cup at her, the same way he did with the earbuds. “See anything interesting?”

“Looked up Dr. Frost on Google. She’s famous in certain circles, apparently. Mostly works with severe trauma victims.” Lewis clicks her teeth again. Matt wonders if it’s a habit. “Other than that, no. No clues, Scooby Doo. What do you make of them?”

“She’s trying to do her job, and so is he.” _For the most part_. “I don’t like that he didn’t tell her we were coming.”

“You caught that too?”

The lie had been a neon sign, all buzzing light and dead flies. “Yeah.”

“Neither do I.” Lewis shoves her phone back into her coat pocket. “She tried to escape. Simmons.”

“If she’s traumatized and drugged, it’s more than possible that she’s mixing up reality with dreams. She could have been running from anything.”

“Yeah,” says Lewis, slowly. “She could have.”

“But you don’t think she was.”

“I think we need to talk to the good doctor,” says Lewis, and steps away from him. “Dr. Frost, Detective Ward. Is there a problem?”

“No,” says Ward, before Frost can get a word out. “Emma’s agreed that it’s for the best. It’ll take a little while for Dr. Simmons to come out of sedation.”

“How long?”

“An hour,” says Frost, in a tight voice. “Give or take.”

“While we’re waiting, there’s something you should see,” says Ward. He turns up the collar of his jacket. “If you’ll follow me, Agents.”

Ward marches by them and out the door again without so much as a goodbye to Dr. Frost. Frost herself crosses her arms tight over her chest. Her fingernails are digging hard into her palms. Lewis looks at Matt again, and then reaches out, touching her hand to Frost’s elbow.

“If you’re not comfortable, Doctor, we can wait. I don’t want to force Dr. Simmons into anything that might be dangerous for her.”

“I don’t have much of a choice, apparently,” says Frost. “I want the monster that did that to those men caught as much as anyone, Agent Lewis. People die around here, sure, and they get murdered, too, but never—never like that. Whatever you need to do, I’m not going to get in your way.”

She’s lying through her teeth, and even Lewis can hear it. _Which part is the lie, though? Which is truth?_ He’s not sure. Still, Lewis nods once, and backs off. “If you’re comfortable,” she says again, and then she hooks her arm through Matt’s and tugs him back through the door. She cocks her eyebrows at Matt from behind her hair.

“I’ve heard about people being friendly on the West Coast, but I didn’t think it’d go this far.”

“You wanna be the one to ask them whether they like Seattle’s Best or Starbucks better?” Matt says, and Lewis actually snorts. Then she stops, her eyes crinkling at the corners, mouth quirking oddly. _She didn’t expect to laugh_ , he thinks. Well. Turnaround is fair play.

“I’ll leave that one to you,” Lewis says after a moment.

“I appreciate that,” Matt says, and slips into the passenger’s seat.

They don’t head back to the police station, but to a diner a few blocks away from the psychiatric hospital. The neon lights in the window are flickering, but the kitchen smells clean and the food isn’t as full of chemicals as it could be, which he counts as a bonus. Ward’s already found a table, a booth in the back that he slips into with a sort of territoriality that says that he comes here a lot. The waitress knows him, too; she delivers coffee without a word and then slips away. Lewis pulls the pot closer to herself, turns a mug right side up. “So, this thing you need to show us, it’s not in the station?”

“No,” says Ward shortly, and sips at his coffee. He drinks it black. The waitress comes back, takes their orders (or Ward’s orders, since he makes suggestions in the sort of voice that’s more of a command) and vanishes again. “No, there’s—most of the station doesn’t think that this is even a case. Judging by what I’ve learned about your department, I figured you’d be familiar with that.”

Lewis adds sugar to her coffee. She hasn’t taken her pea coat off yet, and the temperature of her hands is lower than the rest of her body. Same with her ankles. _Poor circulation_ , Matt thinks. He files that away too. “What isn’t a case, Detective Ward?”

Ward turns the mug between his hands. His calluses make tiny scraping sounds against the porcelain. “There was a woman here who went missing two months ago, up in those woods,” he says. “Drifter. Mostly she worked odd jobs around the diner, took some programming projects from local computer companies. She went by the name Skye, for the most part. If she had another name, she never told anyone.”

“And you never ran a trace on her?”

“Why would I? She wasn’t doing anything illegal that I could tell. Except loitering, maybe, but she lived in her van. Generally she’d move if you asked, kept quiet, didn’t bother too many people.” There’s a lie in there. _You definitely ran a trace, Detective Ward._ Why the man’s lying about it, he has no idea. Ward leans back in his chair. “Well, until the last month she was here, anyway. Uniforms caught her trespassing on private property three times in three weeks. She claimed she was looking for someone, but she’d never answer when I asked her who.”

“You?” says Matt.

“I knew her,” says Ward, shortly. “Lakewood’s not small, but it’s not too big, either. You get to know the wait-staff if you visit a place like this often enough.”

It’s not a lie, but there’s something about the way he says it that pricks at Matt’s skin, not quite a warning, not quite a hunch. “So, you’d say hello to each other on the street sort of knowing? Or…?”

Ward goes still. “I don’t like what you’re implying.”   

“I’m not implying anything,” Matt says. “Just trying to clarify.”

“I won’t lie and say that I didn’t think she was attractive,” says Ward, after a moment. Next to Matt, Lewis is drizzling cream into her coffee, seemingly not paying attention, but her back is ramrod straight. “She wasn’t interested. Does that answer your question?”

 “You don’t have to get defensive.” Matt turns his face towards Lewis. “Is there another mug?”

“Hm?” She looks up from her cream project. “Oh. Like—six inches forward, three to your left. Coffee’s to your right, maybe—five inches up from your hand. Ish.”

Matt blinks behind his glasses. She’s right, give or take an inch or so with the coffee. He nods once, and ignores the way Ward’s watching him.

“So, pretty girl goes missing, and no one raises a hue and cry?” Lewis sips her coffee, and then adds another little thing of cream. “That’s hard to believe.”

“Like I said, she was a drifter. Outside of this diner? Most people didn’t know who she was. Besides, her van was gone, she didn’t leave a forwarding address with the programmers she was working with. Open and shut. Probably not the first time she’s left a place without telling anyone.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“I asked her the last time she was caught trespassing what the hell she thought she was doing.” Ward watches Lewis’s hands as she moves back and forth, twisting up the remains of a sugar stick, setting it in the ashtray at the end of the table. “She wouldn’t tell me. All she did was ask about Medicine Lake.”

Lewis goes still again. “Medicine Lake?”

“It’s a lake up where Simmons and the others were surveying for—whatever it was.” Ward cracks his knuckles. “Not much of a lake, to be honest. Bit small. Skye managed to get it into her head somehow that whoever she was looking for was out there, and she wouldn’t listen to anyone. Nobody’s seen her since.”

“Medicine Lake,” Lewis says again, and pulls out her phone, tapping away with her fingernails.

Ward turns his face towards the glass door, watching people go by for a moment. “Look, I’m not saying it’s connected. More than likely Skye just up and ditched at the last minute, went to find a new place to panhandle for coding jobs. Just wanted to mention it.”

 _Lie,_ Matt thinks. Lewis is still distracted. Matt clears his throat, takes a sip of coffee. “Who’s Trip?”

Ward doesn’t fumble his coffee mug. His heart does skip a beat, though. “My partner,” he says. “Detective Antoine Triplett. He’d be here right now, but he’s following a lead on another case. Where’d you hear the name?”

“You mentioned it when you were talking to Dr. Frost,” says Matt. He smiles politely. “I have good hearing.”

Ward gives him a sour look, and curls his hands into fists under the table for a moment. “Well,” he says, leaning back in the cushions. “Trip wants to go up to the site with us, so you’ll meet him tomorrow. He’s very—ah. He’s very interested in this case.”

There’s a layer of meaning spread over that which Matt doesn’t really want to parse out at the moment. He curls his hands around his mug. “All right, then.”

Ward’s phone buzzes. He looks at his watch, and then shifts out of the booth. “Excuse me.”

The bell on the door rings as he shuts it behind him, tapping out a text with his thumbs. Lewis is still on her own phone, scrolling through something, tapping her tongue against the back of her teeth like an old habit. Matt tastes the coffee again, and winces. “Is there sugar?”

“Like two inches away from where the mug was,” Lewis says. “To the left.”

“Thanks.”

She twitches a shoulder, not looking up from her phone.

“You trust him?”

“I think he wants to find this woman pretty badly.” She takes a screenshot, he can hear the click of the phone, and then puts it back into her pocket. “Whether or not it has to do with Simmons, I can’t say.”

“He could have told us in the hospital.”

“He could have, but he didn’t.”

Which is important, but he’s not sure why yet. “What’s so interesting about Medicine Lake?”

“Hm?” Lewis says, casual. “Oh. Great crawdads.”

He has to hold his breath for a moment to keep from sighing. “You know,” he says, “it’d be helpful if I knew what your theory actually was.”

“But where would the fun be in that?” she says, and claps her hands as the waitress turns up with pancakes.  

.

.

.

Simmons is starting to come out of her stupor when they make it back to the hospital forty minutes later. Still, there’s a little time left. Matt excuses himself while Lewis pulls Frost aside, leaving Ward standing around pointlessly in the foyer and staring at his fingernails. He can’t help but think it’s probably the best place for the man. He’s still not entirely sure why SHIELD rejected Grant Ward, but until he figures it out, he’d rather spend as little time near him as possible.

Jessica picks up on the third ring. “It’s nearly midnight, asshole.”

“Like you weren’t awake,” Matt says. He turns his back on the view, leans against the railing. Frost’s office is the only place in the whole hospital where you can access the balcony doors without shattering a window. He can smell the ocean on the wind, and oil tankers. And dead fish. And a doe in the bushes, waiting for him to go back inside. “How are things on your end?”

“I’m the size of a whale, I have to piss like every three seconds, and I despise Luke Cage with every fiber of my being,” Jessica says _._ “Where are you?”

“Lakewood, Washington. Mind running a search for me?”

“Your phone broken?” says Jessica, but there’s the scuff of cloth over cloth anyway. “What the hell are you doing in Washington?”

“Coulson didn’t tell you?”

“Coulson never tells me anything.”

“Ask him when you call to yell at him tomorrow,” says Matt, and Jessica snorts in spite of herself. He hears her resettle on the mattress. “I know he likes those calls.”

“Yeah, they’re his favorite goddamn thing in the world.” She huffs. “What am I Googling for you this time? And if you’re asking me about mug cake recipes again, I swear to God, I’m going to kill you.”

“While you’re the size of a whale?”

“I could rip you apart with my pinky finger while hanging upside-down from a fire escape and one hand behind my back,” Jessica says. Which, from Jess, is a gesture of affection. “Google is my bitch, Murdock, seriously, give it to me.”

“There’s a place about four hours northeast of Lakewood called Medicine Lake. Can you see if there’s been anything about that in any sort of newspaper or blog post? Not travelogues or camping records or anything. Just—anything notable that happened in or around the area.”

“You know, you could have a tech do this.”

“And have you miss out on the fun?”

“Screw you.” She taps at the keyboard. “Medicine Lake. Umm. There was a cougar attack like…a year ago. That what you mean?”

“Not really.” Rain’s coming again. He can smell it. “Anything about a handful of unexplained deaths? Maybe a month and a half ago.”

Jessica’s quiet for a moment. “Nope. That what you’re out there for?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Well, there’s no news about it. Or if there was, it’s been scrubbed pretty clean.” She taps at the mouse a few times. “There’s not much of anything about Medicine Lake. Wikipedia article, but that mostly talks about how it was a part of a reservation until the seventies, when it was sold off. Land around it was used by logging companies for a while, blah blah blah.” She clicks her tongue against her teeth. “Sorry, Murdock. Nothing weird about this lake at all that I can find. Well, unless you count E.T.”

“…run that one by me again.”

“Major UFO hotspot apparently. Well, it is, according to—” Jess pauses. “According to one Hot_Rod_Red, from a blog called _The Lone Gunmen_. Wanna take bets about how big this guy’s dick is, or can we just call it now and say _Jess wins, the thing’s a shrimp?_ ”

“I don’t make bets with you anymore, remember?”

“Yeah, ‘cause you’re a pansy.” She grunts unhappily. “Christ, I hate this. Any of this ringing a bell for you, Murdock? UFOs? Close encounters of the sketch kind?”

“Uh.” In the office, Lewis and Frost are talking about Simmons. He should probably get back inside. “Maybe. It might.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

_Do you believe in aliens?_

“Sorry, Jess. Have to go.”

“You’re not even gonna explain? I feel so used.”

“Sorry,” he says again, and hangs up before she can snipe at him. He’ll catch hell for it, because Jessica is about thirteen months pregnant (not literally, but she moves and sounds and acts like it, especially considering how she keeps referring to the unborn fetus as _this fatass tapeworm_ ), but he does it.

_Do you believe in aliens?_

_But instead of breaking up trafficking rings and hunting down serial killers she’s buried herself in the basement with Bigfoot and the Jersey Devil._

_Well,_ he thinks, as he slips back into the office. _I was warned._

“There you are,” says Frost, as he shuts the door. “Dr. Simmons is waking up. If you want to talk to her, you’ll need to be quick. It’s light’s-out in forty minutes.”

“Thank you,” Lewis says. “Again, thank you, so much. I know you’re doing this against your better judgment.”

“I’m doing this because I was told to,” says Frost shortly. “I don’t appreciate being bullied by the police. Not you,” she adds, when Lewis blinks. “But I’d keep an eye on your tour guide, Agent Lewis. He’s a real Prince Charming until you don’t give him what he wants.”

Frost stalks out before either of them can say anything. Lewis heaves a breath, in and out. She fists her hands into her pockets. “What a bundle of joy this case is turning out to be.”

“Not what you bargained for?” Matt says. She slips her hand into his elbow again, and tugs him towards the door.

“Nah, exactly what I bargained for. The douchebaggery is par for the course.”

He bites the inside of his cheek, and stays quiet after that.

Jemma Simmons is in a locked room on the first floor, with two or three empty rooms between her and other patients. _Empty space_ , he thinks. _A blockade._ Frost has a keycard in one hand, her back turned firmly on Grant Ward. “You’re gonna want to leave your weapons outside,” she says. “I don’t think she’ll go at you, not immediately, anyway, but there’s recklessness and then there’s stupidity.”

“And bringing a gun into the room of a traumatized woman is stupid?”

“It’s stupid when the last person to go in there had to get three stitches in his cheek because she went after him with his pencil,” says Frost. She gestures towards a nearby door, one with a keypad and a carded lock. “You can put your things in there. I’m the only one with a key, the patients won’t get at any of it. Is there anything you want to take in there with you?”

“A recorder.” Lewis digs it out of her coat pocket, flashes it at Frost.

“I have surveillance up in there.”

“Just in case.”

Frost blows air out her nose. “Fine. Careful she doesn’t try to take it from you.”

Matt, who doesn’t have a gun (his batons are in his bag in the back of the rental car) just slips his hands into his pockets. “She’s that dangerous?”

“She’s not dangerous,” Frost says, as Lewis pulls her gun from the small of her back, disengages the clip, and puts that back into her pocket. “She’s traumatized.”

“From what it sounds like you keep her sedated for most of the day. That doesn’t say _dangerous_ to you?”

Frost snaps her teeth in frustration. “There have been violent incidents. They’re explicable. She’s not violent for the sake of violence, and by my definition, that’s what makes a person dangerous. She’s defending herself.”

Something about that makes him feel very cold. “Well. Defending herself with pencils near eyeballs.” He pauses. “Which wouldn’t really matter, in my case.”

“There’s a _reason_ why I’m not comfortable with this.” Frost opens the closet ( _code is 321586, and he sets that into stone in his head in case he needs to get in there later, in case something happens—_ ), puts the gun inside on the highest shelf, and shuts it again. The bolt clicks automatically into place. “Dr. Simmons is a very sick woman, Agent Lewis. The anti-psychotics haven’t worked, the anti-depressants haven’t worked. Sometimes she seems rational, and then the next second? She’s screaming and we can’t make her stop. We never know what’s going to set her off. The reason why we moved her to the first floor was because she slit her wrists open on a broken window trying to climb outside. Doing this—it’s for her own safety as much as it is for ours.”

“And she’s been like this for two weeks, now?”

“Roughly, yes. Before that? Standard shock, or so I thought. It was lasting a long time, of course, but I’ve seen that happen before, especially with extreme trauma. Sometimes if the incident inflicts a deep enough mark, that state can last for months. Or years.” She sighs. “I’m not equipped to keep her here while she’s like this, but I’m not about to send her to another hospital, either.”

“Does she not have any family?”

Frost sighs. “Her parents live in London. I’ve spoken to them on Skype twice. Neither of them has come out.”

Jesus. Matt cocks his head. “And no one from SHIELD bothered to ask about her?”

“She hasn’t had any visitors that I know of aside from Detective Ward and the pair of you.”

A few feet down the hall, Ward shifts from foot to foot, and looks up at the ceiling. “We don’t have a lot of time here, folks.”

“One last thing.” Lewis cocks her head. “Who sent the footage to the local PD? I assume it’s not policy to release film of patients that are currently experiencing care.”

“Hell no, it isn’t,” Frost snaps. “The nurse who leaked that footage was fired the same day. I’m still not sure how Detective Ward—” she glares “—managed to get his hands on a copy, considering it wasn’t even sent to the state troopers.”

“Anonymous tip,” says Ward, looming up behind them. “Probably your nurse.”

“Why would he steal the footage in the first place, though?”

“Who knows? It was very disappointing. Lincoln was a good nurse, seemed like a responsible kid. Respectful. And then this.” She sighs, and flicks the card against her fingernails. “Too many people in there at once will frighten her. Ward, she’s seen you before, she doesn’t like you. You stay out here.”

“I have questions for her.”

“I thought you called in the FBI because you weren’t able to answer the questions on your own?”

Ward goes the sort of still that cats do before leaping on dying birds. He says, “I suppose you’re right, there.”

“I usually am,” says Frost tartly. “Go sit in the waiting room.”

Ward stares at her. Still, he turns on his heel, and stalks off towards the waiting room. He stops just beyond the corner of the corridor, out of sight of Dr. Frost. Nobody else notices.

Frost shakes her hair back out of her face. “She’s going to be disoriented, coming off the sedatives. It’s more than likely she won’t remember enough to answer any of your questions. The _instant_ I feel like she’s being made uncomfortable in any way, the interview is over. Do you understand?”

“We do,” says Lewis.

“Good.”

Jemma Simmons is thin, with wavy hair that hangs in odd curtains around her sharp face. The bandages on her arms are fresh, and even if the cuts have started to heal (—cut is the wrong word for them, these are tears, snags in her skin where the glass caught and sliced as someone dragged her back—) he can still catch the tang of blood under the antibacterial. For some reason, he can also smell something like smoke. Not on her, but just…in the room. Like the aftermath of an electrical fire. She blinks very slowly as Frost slips into the room. “Oh,” she says. “Hullo. You’re real.”

“Jemma,” says Dr. Frost. “Do you remember my name?”

Simmons scrunches her face up for a moment. There’s still drugs in her system, even if she’s sitting up without help. It takes her a minute. “Emma,” she says, finally. “I remember you. You said your name was Emma.”

“That’s right.” Frost perches on a nearby chair, crossing her legs beneath her pencil skirt. She folds her hands together. “How are you feeling today?”

Simmons wrinkles her nose again. Her eyes drift over Frost, over the walls (bare), over the door. They track back to Lewis and Matt, standing in the frame. Lewis is scuffing her shoe over a scorch mark on the carpet. “Who are they?”

“They’re from the FBI. They wanted to ask you a few questions, if you feel all right with it, Dr. Simmons.”

Simmons fists her hands around the hem of her blanket. She swallows twice. “Um. I don’t—I don’t know—”

“Dr. Simmons?” says Lewis. Simmons jumps, and stares at her, leaning away the way a feral cat will if you get too close. Lewis drops her hand. “I’m Darcy,” she says. She crouches by the bed, keeping her hands on the quilt so Simmons can see them. “I’m sorry to bother you while you’re still riding the funky train from Pentothal, but I just want to talk to you about a few things, okay? I know you probably want to sleep—”

“No.” Simmons shakes her head fiercely, her hair stinging at her cheeks. Matt slips into the room, and shuts the door behind him. There’s an automatic lock on this one, too. It snaps into place. “I don’t—don’t want to sleep. I don’t want to sleep. I don’t like it.”

“I hear that.” Lewis sits back on her heels. “I have strange dreams after I visit crime scenes, every time. I used to have really bad ones when I was working human trafficking.”

The longer Simmons is awake, the less hold the drugs have on her. Her fingers have begun to tremble, and her heart—her heart’s reaching worrying speeds. “Really?”

“Yeah. There’s this really awful one, I can never fall back to sleep after—and it’s silly that that’s the one that keeps me awake, when nothing even really happens—but I’m just—I’m in a room, like this one, but there’s no door. And I know someone’s coming for me, but I can’t get out.”

Simmons watches Lewis with eyes like a doe’s, big and wide and unblinking. Her heartbeat’s kicking up faster. In the chair, Frost shifts around, her forehead creasing. Matt wonders if this is exactly what she had in mind, when they’d asked to come in and talk to Jemma Simmons. It’s certainly not what he was picturing at all.

“Do you have weird dreams too?” asks Lewis, ignoring Frost entirely. She leaves her hands on the bed. Simmons looks down at them, and then up at Lewis’s face. “Well, I mean. Everyone has weird dreams. But have you been having them a lot, lately? Dreams like that one, where you’re trapped, and you know someone’s coming, and there’s nothing you can do about it?”

“I don’t know how relevant this is,” says Frost in a low voice. Matt shifts behind her chair. There’s something odd about how Simmons is breathing at the moment. (—the room smells like smoke and there are marks on the carpet that are more like singes and Lewis is buzzing with tension, she knows something that she hasn’t said and _do you believe in aliens_ —)

“Just give her a minute,” he says in a low voice. _Don’t make me regret saying that, Lewis._

“No,” says Simmons, before Frost can argue. She slurs a bit from the drugs, when she talks. Still, her accent is trim and educated and logical, even if her voice is shaking. “No, I don’t—I don’t have dreams like that.”

“Good, because they’re crap.” Lewis taps her fingers against the bed. “You mind if I sit here? Only I’m in heels. I can do this for a while, but it’ll hurt like a bitch when I try to stand up.”

Simmons blinks again, slowly. Her eyes skitter to Frost, and then to Matt, before swerving back to Lewis again. “Go ahead.”

“You’re amazing,” says Lewis, and drops down onto the edge of the bed. “Dr. Simmons, I’m not gonna talk to you like you’re stupid or like you can’t understand me. You’re probably smarter than the rest of us put together even when you’re high out of your skull, and there’s no point in pretending you’re not. Which is why I’m just going to be blunt, because I think you need to hear that right now, and if I’m wrong, go ahead and scratch me or do whatever. I’ve been hurt worse.”

“Agent Lewis—” Frost says, but Lewis ignores her.

“The thing is, though, I don’t think you’re gonna hurt me, because I don’t think you’re crazy,” says Lewis. “I think you’re frightened, Dr. Simmons, and I think someone’s making sure you stay that way, but I don’t think you’re crazy, and I don’t think you’re sick. You can prove me wrong if you want. I’m used to being wrong, actually. But this time I don’t think I am.”

Simmons scoffs. “Shows what you know,” she says, bitterly, and Frost’s lips part. Matt touches the back of Frost’s chair, standing quite still.

“Which of us is fully sober right now? It’s not you, it’s me. Just FYI.” Lewis cocks her head. “Look. Dr. Frost here thinks that you can’t handle it if I ask you a few questions about what happened. She’s your doctor, and I’m sure she knows best. It’s not like I’m a psychologist. I have no idea how your brain works. But what you know could help me a lot, and if I’m right about what happened to you, then it’ll go a long way to making sure they can’t come after you again.”

Simmons freezes. Her heart skips a beat, and she freezes. Her nails dig hard into the blankets. Lewis lifts the tape recorder, waving it until it catches her attention.

“You mind if I record this?”

“What did you mean?” Simmons says. Her voice shakes. “Tell me.”

“I think you saw something that scared the living hell out of you,” says Lewis. She flicks on the tape recorder, and holds it in her palm. “I think that whatever or whoever killed those scientists you were working with left you alive for a reason. And I think someone has been coming in here—every night?”

Simmons flinches.

“Every night since you’ve woken up. He wakes you up—it is a he, right?—and tells you in extreme detail what’s going to happen to you if you tell anyone about what you saw.” Lewis tips her head. “Or—he doesn’t talk about you at all, does he? He talks about your parents. And your friends.”

“That’s impossible,” Frost says. “No one can come into this facility without me knowing about it.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not happening,” says Lewis, not looking away from Simmons. “How often does he show up, Dr. Simmons? Every night?”

“You have to stop asking.” Her voice is thin and cracking. “You have to stop asking. If you keep asking I can’t—I can’t say anything, I can’t, I have to—”

“He comes in and tells you about all the things they’re going to do to your family if you say anything to anybody. And you believe him, because he’s different. Because he scares you for a reason.” Simmons tenses under the blanket, ready to fly, but Lewis reaches out and grabs onto her hands. She squeezes, but not hard, just enough to catch Simmons’s attention again, just enough to drag her back to the present. “Look at me, Dr. Simmons. I’m right, aren’t I? Someone comes in here to tell you to stay quiet.”

“No,” says Simmons, but her heart’s staggering too much for her to be telling the truth. “No, you’re—that’s mad. You’re mad.”

“I’ve worked with crazy for a long time, Doc. This isn’t crazy. This is logic, and you know it. Don’t you?”

Simmons swallows hard, and says nothing.

“No matter what, I have to go up to the lake,” says Lewis, implacable. She doesn’t shout. She sounds like she’s talking about the weather. But her heart is beating so fast it sounds as though it might burst. “Four people are dead, Dr. Simmons. I know you were there. I know you know what happened. But whether you tell me or not, it’s my job to go up to that lake and try to figure out the truth. Now, you can tell me what you saw, or you can let me go in blind, but either way I’m going.” Lewis lets Simmons go. “Your choice.”

Frost is halfway out of her chair, mouth open, silent. Outside, Ward has his ear to the door, cursing under his breath that he can’t hear anything. Simmons swallows, and swallows again. Salt bites at the air.

“I can’t tell,” she says, and begins to cry. “I can’t say anything, he told me not to say anything, I can’t tell you anything but you can’t go up there, you can’t go to the lake, you can’t—”

“What can you tell me?”

“I can’t tell you anything.”

“You can tell me what you were doing up there, can’t you?”

“I can’t tell you _anything_.”

“What happened at the lake, Dr. Simmons?”

“Back off, Agent Lewis,” says Frost. Simmons shakes her head, not at Lewis, but at Frost. She curls her hands into fists, whacks at her knees, once, twice. Lewis catches her hands.

“Let me tell you, then,” says Lewis, in a low, fierce voice. “You and the other surveyors went up to that lake looking for something. I don’t know what, but you were looking for something, something specific. Before you found it, someone else found you, and they killed the rest of your team. But they left you alive. I don’t know if they didn’t realize you were there, or if they were ordered to leave you alone for some reason, but they killed your team, and now someone’s coming in here every night to put the fear of God in you to make sure you stay quiet. I don’t think your shock was fake, but I’m pretty sure this whole thing you’ve been pulling, the panic, the attacks—that’s you trying to keep it quiet, too. Isn’t it?”

“ _Agent Lewis_ ,” says Frost, but Simmons starts to cry in earnest now, shaking her head.

“You can’t go up there, you _can’t_ , you can’t—”

“What were you looking for, Agent Simmons?” says Lewis, and Simmons flinches. “SHIELD sent you up there to look for something. Can you at least tell me that much?”

“Not according to regulations,” says Matt in a quiet voice, and Simmons snaps her eyes over to him. She blinks, once, twice. “Which you know.”

“Don’t be a spoilsport, Murdock,” Lewis says without looking around at him.

“Murdock,” Simmons repeats. “You’re—you’re SHIELD. You’re Murdock from the SID. You—you have to tell Coulson, you have to tell him not to go there, you have to tell him to stay away—”

“Stay away from _where_ , Doctor?” He has the feeling Lewis just wants to grab Simmons by the shoulders and shake her. “What does Coulson have to stay away from? What were you looking for up there?”

“I can’t tell you,” Simmons says, and Frost stands up.

“Okay. We’re done.”

“We’re _not_ done,” Lewis says. “What did you see up there, Simmons? What did they do that you can’t talk about?”

 “Lewis,” says Matt. “Jesus.”

 “Don’t you understand?” Simmons shouts, and yanks away from Lewis. “I _can’t tell you anything_!”

Lewis catches her breath. She searches Simmons’s face, then, very, very still. Her heart is pounding in his ears. “You can’t?”

“I _can’t_.”

“You can’t say anything.”

Simmons jerks her head up. Her lips part. She’s shaking. “I can’t say anything,” she says, with a trembling in her throat that means _hope._ “I _can’t_ say anything.”

“You’re not allowed to say anything,” Lewis says, her inflection odd, but Simmons catches her breath. She nods, fiercely.

“They told me not to say anything,” she says. She’s not lying.

“Okay.”

“What the hell is going on here?” says Frost. Neither Simmons nor Lewis give her a sideways glance.

“I can’t tell you,” Simmons says again. “I can’t tell you.”

“Even if you want to.”

She nods.

“You can’t tell me what happened at the surveyors’ camp. Or about the man who comes to see you, you can’t say anything about that, either.” Lewis is breathing hard, like she’s running a race. “Is—is he why you can’t say anything?”

Simmons shakes her head.

“Are you saying no or can you not talk about it?”

“I can’t talk about it.”

“They’re the ones who tell you to attack, aren’t they?”

“I can’t talk about it.”

Lewis curses under her breath. “Can you tell me anything at all?”

“Agent Lewis,” says Frost again, but Simmons shakes her head.

“I’m fine, Emma.”

“You’re sick.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” she snaps. She doesn’t look away from Lewis. “Don’t go in the lake. You can’t go in the lake. Don’t—don’t touch it, don’t drink it, don’t even step in the mud. Don’t go into the lake.”

“No skinny dipping. Duly noted.”

“And—” Her throat works, convulsively. For a moment, Matt thinks she’s choking. Then she says, “The lightning. It didn’t—”

Iron flares sharp into the air. “Oh, Jesus,” says Lewis, because all of a sudden her hands are speckled in red. Blood is dripping from Simmons’s nose. She lunges to grab a Kleenex, but Simmons doesn’t let go of her hand. She gulps, swallowing blood. Underneath the gagging, there’s a thin, ringing noise, a whine like a computer starting up. It’s here and then gone again, so fast that he’s only half-certain he heard it at all.

“The lightning didn’t come from the sky,” Simmons says. “It was—”

The whine comes back, just for a moment, just for a second. Simmons opens her mouth, but no words come out. She’s voiceless. She croaks like a crow, and lets go of Lewis’s wrist. She puts a hand up over her nose. “Damn it,” she says. “ _Damn_ it.”

“Lean forward,” Lewis says. She finally snags a few Kleenex. “Put this under your nose and lean forward. Don’t lean back, you’ll choke yourself.”

“I’m a bloody doctor, I know how to deal with a nosebleed.”

“But you can’t talk about how you’re getting it?”

Simmons shakes her head, and wads the Kleenex up underneath her nose. Lewis sighs. She gets up off the bed, looks down at Simmons again. Simmons is watching her. “I’m not going to die,” she says, suddenly gentle. “And even if I do, it’s not your fault. Do you understand?”

Simmons doesn’t say anything. She closes her eyes, and turns her face away.

Frost manages to hold her tongue between her teeth until they’re on the porch, at least. She shuts the door very carefully behind the four of them, Matt, Lewis, Ward, and Frost, and then says, “What the _hell_ did you think you were doing?”

“You need to put a guard in her room,” says Lewis. “Not outside her door, in her room. It probably won’t stop it, but it’ll at least put them off their guard.”

“Put who off their—”

“Detective Ward, can I talk to you for a second?” Lewis says, and before anyone can say anything she’s seized Ward by the elbow and dragged him to the base of the porch steps, out of range of Frost’s hearing. Frost is clenching and unclenching her fists, _rattling_ , her skin hot, her eyes narrowed.

“What the hell is her problem?” she snaps at Matt, and then she slams back into the hospital. Down at the base of the steps, Lewis is speaking low and fast.

“I need everything you have from your previous interviews with Dr. Simmons, everything that your anonymous tipster gave you—I don’t care who he is, I _need_ it, I needed it the day before we even arrived, is that clear?”

“I don’t—”

“And Detective Ward, if I ever hear about you threatening someone with legal action for trying to preserve the integrity and safety of their patients again, then I will come down on you so fast and so hard that you’re gonna be picking your teeth out of your own ass. Are we clear?”

She glares at him, her hair tangled and damp from the spitting rain. It’s painting her face out in streaks of smoke. Matt’s been catching bits and pieces of her since yesterday, but rain has always been the best medium for this. _She’s beautiful,_ he realizes, and he’s not entirely sure why that’s so startling _._ Then she whirls away, and the moment’s broken. Ward is breathing in through his nose, out through his mouth, slow, steady breaths, but the bones in his hands are scraping against each other.

“Murdock.” Lewis stops at the bottom of the stairs. “We should go. We need to get ready to leave tomorrow.”

“You’re used to getting your way, aren’t you?” Matt says, but he does it so mildly that she doesn’t even notice.

“Ward says bye, by the way,” she adds to him, halfway to the car. “He had somewhere to go.”

“Lewis—”

Jemma Simmons is watching them from the window. Lewis doesn’t look up from her hands as she fumbles the keys out of her pocket, fingers trembling. “I have a feeling Detective Ward is one of those people that trips over tree roots so we’re gonna have to be careful to make sure he doesn’t end up in the lake, don’t you think?”

“ _Lewis_ ,” he says again. “What the hell was that in there?”

“What the hell was what?”

“Quit the crap,” says Matt, and Lewis stops on the opposite side of the car, her hand on the roof. “You were expecting her to say something like that, weren’t you?”

“Say what?”

“That—that she can’t actually _physically_ tell anyone anything. Or am I misunderstanding? Is that not what she was saying? Was there some kind of code you agreed on beforehand?”

“She’s SHIELD, so you tell me, SHIELD Spook.”

“Jesus—what the hell is going on out here? What is it you’re not telling me?”

“You’re not ready for what I think,” Lewis snaps.

“You think she was abducted by aliens,” Matt snaps back. “Don’t you?”

“That was my theory going in, yes.”

“So it’s not your theory now?”

Lewis drums on the top of the car, and then gets into the driver’s seat. Matt opens the door, gets in, and slams it behind him. It’s only once Ward can’t hear them that Lewis turns to him and says, “You heard what she said.”

“I heard a very scared and very ill woman telling you that she couldn’t _physically_ say anything about what happened to her because of a mysterious man that somehow makes his way into the psychiatric hospital every night to threaten her despite all of the security in that place— _after_ you asked very leading questions.” Simmons had believed it. Simmons also could be insane. He wants to grab Lewis by the scruff of the neck and shake some answers out of her. “You told Frost you weren’t going to push.”

“She could handle it.”

“We’re never going to get into that room again, you realize that.”

“Not until we prove Simmons is telling the truth, no, but it was a risk worth taking considering the situation.”

“You mean how Simmons apparently can’t physically tell people things anymore? Or the part where you think she was abducted by aliens?”

Lewis grits her teeth together, and sticks her chin out. “I _told_ you that you weren’t ready to hear what I think.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“You know what? Fine.” She turns in her seat to face him, crosses her arms tight over her chest. “Fine. I think that there’s something up there in those woods that certain elements would do anything to keep hidden. I think that the rest of the surveyors _were_ killed by a person, or people, actually, and that those people are the kind of special that most people can only find in science fiction. I think that SHIELD sent Simmons out here to look for evidence that these people exist, and she and the rest of her team were caught, and now they’re using that same kind of special to threaten everything and everyone she loves to keep her from ratting them out. I think the reason the camp has been left untouched for a month is that the people who attacked the surveyor team made the place too hellish for anyone to get near. And I think that woman Ward talked about, Skye? I think she’s involved in all of this. I don’t know how yet. But I think she’s involved.”

Matt gropes for words. Lewis is _fierce_ , blazing, vibrating in her seat, waiting for an answer. Finally, he says, “There’s no evidence for any of that.”

“I’ve seen it before,” she snaps. “What happened with Simmons. The nosebleed, the violence. That nosebleed wasn’t a coincidence, Murdock. She started bleeding the instant she tried forcing past whatever compulsion is keeping her from explaining everything that happened.”

“So you think, what, that it’s a conditioned response?”

“No, not—” She hisses through her teeth. “The last time I found a man like that, he died. About a week after I talked to him. The autopsy uncovered a foreign body in one of his primary sinus cavities. Tiny, about the length of your pinkie fingernail. Evidence said it’d been forced up his nose.”

Matt thinks of the whine, again, the thin, scraping sound of electronics. “An implant. In his sinus cavity.”

“One that’s programmed to send out pulses of electricity, according to the person I had analyze it.” Lewis clenches her hands around the wheel of the rental car, leaning back into her seat. There’s something odd about how her skin sounds when it touches the leather of the wheel. _A scar,_ he thinks. _She has a scar._ “I think Simmons has one too. A tracker, a—a metal leash. You were there, you know what happened. She _couldn’t_ actually say anything. She wanted to, but she couldn’t.” She buzzes. “Tell me you don’t think something weird is going on here, Murdock. Tell me that much.”

“I’m not saying it’s not strange. I’m just saying that _strange_ doesn’t automatically mean _aliens._ ”

Lewis stares at him for a moment, bristling. Then she laughs, an odd, broken little sound. “We’re driving up to the camp tomorrow. Why don’t you ask SHIELD about all of this, see what they say.”

“Can we make a deal?” he says, as she turns on the engine. “The next time you decide to be exceptionally aggressive in an interview, at least warn me first?”

“What, so you can add more little notes about my anger management issues to the file you’re building for your bosses?”

“I told you, I’m not spying on you, Lewis.”

“You can’t possibly think I’d believe that.”

And no, he can’t, really. Not with sixteen bugs in her office and a chip on her shoulder the size of a continent. It doesn’t make it any less true. Matt stays quiet for a moment, his hands tight around his cane. “You’re gonna have to start trusting me eventually,” he says. “I want to solve this, same as you do. I’m not the enemy.”

“Everyone’s the enemy,” Lewis snaps. “You just happen to be here.”

They both stay quiet for the rest of the drive.


	2. ii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized that I accidentally stuck a two instead of a three in the number of chapters box when I posted, oops! One more to go. Probably be up in a day or two. (I had like....45k out of 50k done when I posted the first chappie, soooooo there's that.) 
> 
> Chapter content warnings: kidnap, assault, blood, death (I kill Scott in every verse; I don't like him in the comics, sorry not sorry XD), Ward Being Ward (some implications of attempted sexual assault, physical assault, stalking), and other things that I've already warned about, I think.

The coroner doesn’t really have anything to add to the report they’ve already read. The state troopers that went up to survey the camp—they’re not very chatty, Darcy thinks, watching them. She’s pretty sure that the jumpiness has more to do with fear than anything. Their answers feel scripted, and the one she interviews keeps staring hard at the ceiling like he’s going to find a way to escape carved into the plaster. It’s almost ten by the time they pull back into the hotel, and they have exactly squat to show for the wait.

Darcy doesn’t sleep, and it’s not because she doesn’t try. Her brain is running too fast. She goes for a jog around the hotel at four in the morning, even though she usually hates jogging, because her legs are twitching and if she doesn’t do _something_ she’s going to scream. This is what always happens when she finds a case like this—she jumps and skips, skittering with energy, too focused to fall asleep, too blazing to sit still. She jogs, and amps up to a full-on sprint down the length of the block outside of their motel, ignoring the raccoon she startles out of the nearest garbage can. It looks like a walking roll cake, waddling away. Clearly, there’s good pickings around here.

_I’m close._

She’s not close, exactly. She’s not close to what she wants to find, not close to the mark on her palm. Not yet. But she’s close to _something._ Skye the drifter vanishing up into the mountains. Jemma Simmons with a tracker up her nose and a lock on her throat and a man who comes to find her in the dead of night. SHIELD doing nothing. She leaves a message on Emma Frost’s answering machine at about six AM, apologizing for her behavior, asking for a report on the night’s doings, and then jumps into the shower for as long as she can stand it before packing up her things and checking out of her room. There’s no point in keeping them on hold. The camp is a good four hours out of town, and she’s not sure how long they’re going to be there.

Murdock emerges from the reception area at about six-thirty. She’s pretty sure New York City people are incapable of dressing for hikes, but he’s come about as close to it as he can get, dark jeans and boots with an actual freaking jacket—she’s kind of proud of him, honestly, in a twisted way. At least this way he won’t be bitten by a snake.

For some awkward ridiculous reason, though, she feels _guilty_. This is stupid. She knows for a fact that he was sent to watch her, that he’s supposed to spy on her—he admitted it, to her face, that that’s what he’s here for, that he’s meant to be making sure she can’t finish her work. But the thing is, he also told her that. The thing is, he hasn’t once called her crazy. Not yet, and she’s wondering (stupidly, she knows) if he’s ever going to do it. He will, eventually, because everyone does eventually. But he hasn’t yet, and he could have. And that means something.

_Most people also think that bats are blind, but that doesn’t mean that they’re right._

_Don’t fall for the trap of a pretty face, Darcy Lewis. You know better than that._

“Good morning to you,” she says, after the blushing receptionist shows him over to her table. Darcy’s pretty sure he was flirting, judging by the look on the woman’s face. “Ward and his partner are going to be here in about fifteen minutes. You want anything?”

“Is there coffee?”

“You read my mind.” Darcy gets up. When Matt goes to stand, she makes an aborted noise in the back of her throat. “I can get it.”

“You could tell me where it is, I can get my own coffee.”

“Let me do this, okay? It’s not that I think—” She bites her tongue. She’s not entirely sure how to say it. Trust is one thing, sure, but working with someone who hates her guts—that would really suck. “I was kind of an ass yesterday. All right? So just—let me make the goddamn coffee.”

Murdock, halfway out of his chair, goes still. Then, slowly, he sinks back into it. He doesn’t say anything. When she comes back, though, setting the mug on the table in front of him, he offers a quiet “thank you” that for some reason makes her feel even more guilty than she did before. Darcy spends the rest of the wait glaring into her mug and wondering if she can possibly drown herself in it.  

She likes Detective Triplett much better than she likes his partner, a stocky, smiling black man with early onset crow’s feet and a kind of genuine, palpable sweetness that makes her think of slow-moving honey. When she introduces herself, he slows, his eyes flicking from her scalp to her toes in a way that’s more considering than interested. “Not Virginia,” he says. “Georgia?”

Darcy blinks a few times. Behind her, Murdock passes his cane from one hand to the other. “Yeah.”

“Girl,” says Triplett, his drawl going absolutely, obnoxiously syrupy, “we gon’ go places.”

Darcy squawks out a laugh that makes Detective Triplett grin like a schoolboy. On the other side of the car, Ward scoffs.

“Oh, darlin’,” she says, drawling right back at him, “you have no idea.”

“Ward, I’m gonna switch careers now, okay,” says Trip, and Ward rolls his eyes so hard that Darcy’s kind of surprised they don’t just fall right out of his skull. He smacks a USB stick into Darcy’s hand, and turns away.

“Get in the truck, Trip.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” says Trip. He flashes both Darcy and Murdock (Murdock’s eyebrows have climbed into his hair and roosted there) a little salute before jogging back to Detective Ward and the truck. Murdock stops passing his cane around.

“You always flirt with detectives?” he says, in that same mild voice he’d been using during their interview with Ward.

“Only if they’re southern,” she says, and gets back into the car. “Bless your heart for asking.”

The edges of his mouth dip up, just for a moment.

They’ve been on the road for about an hour before the music finally gets too cloying, and Darcy turns it off. Figures, she thinks, that her own mixes start to bother her after a while. _Too much familiarity. Not enough novelty._ Murdock seems to have been waiting for it, though, because he shifts around, and clears his throat. “I called SHIELD last night to ask about Simmons.”

“Did you use special communicators and a new kind of Morse code?”

“Generally we get by with cell phones,” he says, dryly. Darcy has to bite the inside of her lip again, because she’ll be damned if she laughs at one of his jokes when all she wants to do is pop him one in the jaw. “Coulson’s out of the country for the next few days. When I talked to the agent covering for him, Sitwell, I didn’t learn much. But I spoke to a friend of mine—” he turns his bag on his lap, unzips it without looking down, sorting through the contents “—and she sent me this.”

The page he pulls out is laden with braille. Darcy blinks at it, and then at him, before paying attention to the road again. “When’d you get that printed?”

“I had it brought over last night.” He shoves his bag down between his ankles, and settles with the page braced against a book on his lap. _Definitely blind, then_. Which she hadn’t doubted all that much in the first place; medical reports and habits don’t lie, and Murdock moves like someone who hasn’t seen anything or anybody in a very long time. “A lot of it is blacked out or classified beyond my level. But you weren’t wrong when you said that SHIELD was out near Medicine Lake looking for something. Simmons was sent up to the campsite with the sort of equipment that we usually only use for subterranean exploration. Hazmat suits, machines for biochemical analysis, even a Geiger counter.”

“You use Geiger counters and Hazmat suits in subterranean exploration?”

His mouth lifts again. “You never know what you’re going to find under the earth, Agent Lewis.”

“Well, that’s both terrifying and encouraging.” The smile doesn’t drop from his face. If anything, it gets a little wider. Darcy looks back at the road. “Would the other scientists have known about that equipment?”

“A lot of it would have been difficult to hide. It was airlifted in.” He pauses, and then runs his fingers over a few lines again. “Mostly I’m getting this from expense reports. Only thing about this whole case that was left unclassified, so the information’s a little spotty, but it looks like Simmons was supposed to be the one leading the team. She submitted a second, personal report to her supervisor at SHIELD, who, I assume, passed it on to Coulson.”

“Who’s Coulson?”

“My boss,” says Murdock. “On paper, anyway.”

“And in reality?”

“The Special Investigative Division kind of plays by its own rules.”

She considers that. “The way black ops plays by its own rules? Or the way vigilantes do?”

“That,” he says, “is unfortunately way above your pay grade.”

If she wasn’t fairly certain he’d just dodge it, she’d haul off and hit him. _So goddamn frustrating._ “You’re not allowed to tell me any of this, are you?”

“Not technically. But who’s gonna believe you if you say anything?”

It doesn’t sting. She’s not sure if it was meant to. Darcy whistles, long and low. “Why, Agent Murdock, I’ve corrupted you.”

“You can think that, if it makes you feel better.” He turns the page over. He goes back to reading. “None of this actually explains why SHIELD was working with the American government to survey a site that has basically no historical or agricultural significance. Especially with spelunking equipment.”

“Spelunking?”

“Cave-diving.”

“I know what spelunking is.” _Highway to Hell_ is back in her head. Darcy taps out the bass line with her thumbs. “So. One—whatever Simmons should be called. A wilderness expert, camping guy, big hulking manly-man all in plaid to scare the bears away. A botanist to look over the local flora. Geologist, same with the rocks. But the toxicologist and the geneticist are the problem, here. They don’t fit into whatever cover story SHIELD cooked up for this. What the hell were they looking for?”

Instead of getting offended, Murdock just hums. He turns the page back to front, and starts over again. “Toxicology, genetics, botany—maybe there’s some kind of biological contagion and they were investigating viability?”

“If that was the case, there would have been some evidence on Simmons, and there wasn’t anything in the reports about that.”

“She could have avoided contamination somehow.”

“Possibly. It could also explain why the other scientists died the way they did. Burn the bodies, destroy all evidence of whatever’s being created out there.”

“Doesn’t explain the man with broken bones.”

“No,” Darcy says. _You_ , she thinks again, _are not the SHIELD agent I expected._ She shakes her head once or twice. “Doesn’t explain the lightning, either.”

“Why is the coroner so insistent that it was lightning? Judging by the equipment Simmons brought out with her, it’s possible they were electrocuted artificially and then dumped.”

“There was evidence of lightning strikes where the bodies were found. Scorched earth, burned trees. Besides: all four of them? Through a machine that presumably is built to _keep_ that from happening? Doesn’t seem believable to me.”

“Because an implant up Dr. Simmons’s nose is any more believable.”

Darcy knocks her knuckles against the wheel. “My bag’s behind the driver’s seat on the floor. Can you grab it?”

Murdock lifts his eyebrows at her again. Still, he swivels around, groping with one hand until he catches the strap of her backpack and heaves the thing into the front seat. “Now what?”

“Front pocket, right hand side, the one with the keychain on the zipper. It’s not too big, like—half an inch further right. That thing. There’s a little bottle in there, made of glass. Go ahead and open it. Just—don’t lose what’s inside.”

If his eyebrows had been raised before, now they’re practically flying. Still, he puts her bag at his feet, and unscrews the little evidence bottle. The sliver of metal looks very small against his palm. He touches the tip of his index finger to the edge, lines deepening around his mouth. “What is this?”

“That’s what the coroner found up Scott Lang’s nose.” He doesn’t recoil, though he does shift, just for a moment. Murdock frowns, and touches the chip again, drawing his finger over it. “I had some people I know look at it. They couldn’t identify the material. It came back as unknown through every machine known to man.”

“So it’s synthetic?”

“No, it’s completely unknown. No trace on it at all. And when you look at it under a microscope, it’s been tooled. There are markings on it. They look random, but according to my lab rat, they were deliberately etched.”

He considers that. “Who’s Scott Lang?”

“A thief from Florida. Released after three years for good behavior, but he disappeared. Didn’t check in with his parole officer for six months. When they found him again, he was in a state mental hospital, diagnosed with an extreme case of paranoid schizophrenia. Assaulted a police officer. Claimed to be hearing voices in his head. Said that the aliens were coming back.” She tips her head towards his hand. “I went out to talk with him early last year, when someone tipped me off about his case. In the middle of telling me about the voice—he called it the Ant, by the way, said the thing crawled into his ear every night to tell him secrets—he started seizing up. Blood everywhere, nose and mouth, bad headaches. A week later the hospital called me to let me know that he’d been found electrocuted in the bathtub. FBI pathologist did the autopsy, labeled it as suspicious, not enough evidence to tip it into murder, suicide, or accidental. Cho found that, and gave it to me. I’ve carried it around ever since.”

Murdock rolls the strip of metal in his palm. “And you think it’s a transmitter?”

“Transmitter, torture device. A chip like you’d use on a dog. Take your pick.”

Murdock puts the chip back into the bottle, screwing the cap down. He doesn’t slip it back into her bag. “And you think Simmons has the same kind of…chip in her head?”

“The symptoms are identical. She couldn’t talk, her nose started bleeding. She nearly choked before she gave up fighting it. The exact same thing happened with Scott Lang, except he _didn’t_ stop fighting, and wound up nearly suffocating himself.” She’s never going to forget the look on his face, the way his spine had torqued back and the blood had spattered against her hands, just like it had with Dr. Simmons. “Whatever you want to think about who or what put it there, I’ll bet you fifty bucks right now that if I had Dr. Simmons rolled in for an X-ray, we’d find the exact same shape lodged in her sinus cavity.”

“I’m not taking that bet,” says Murdock. “I have this uncomfortable feeling you would win.”

 _Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice._ It could be a calculated play, a backhanded compliment to get into her good books. Still: Darcy’s always been pretty damn good at sniffing out BS, and Murdock’s not yanking her chain. Not about this, anyway. “And yet you don’t believe me.”

“It’s not a matter of belief, it’s a matter of evidence.” He rattles the chip in the bottle. “This is something I can believe. But from what little we know, there’s no way you can project so far ahead to say that almost an entire team of scientists was murdered with lightning, and that the last surviving member is being psychically or physiologically prevented from telling her story. We’ve been here less than a day. There’s no way for us to know that. If you can give me proof? I’d accept it. But until then…” Murdock shrugs. “That’s where I stand.”

She looks at him.

“What?”

“What do you mean, what?”

“I can feel you watching me.”

“Just—” A few cars ahead, Ward changes lanes. Darcy hits the turn signal. “You’re SHIELD, and you’re asking for more proof before you accept that there could be something fantastical going on up at Medicine Lake? Seems counterintuitive, from where _I_ stand.”

He laughs. It’s almost silent, more a catch of air in his throat than anything else. He turns his face towards the window. “SHIELD doesn’t deal in the extraordinary.”

“Aside from you,” she says.

“Nothing extraordinary about me.”

“Like I said before, you’re either a really good liar or a really bad one and I can’t decide which yet.” She purses her lips. She’s kind of tempted to throw something at the back of his head, just to see if he’ll catch it. “Does Hand know about this mojo thing you have going on?”

“There is no _mojo thing_.”

“Really not the best answer. The more you say _no_ , the more I think—hm, he must be hiding something! Oh, wait, he’s SHIELD. He’s _definitely_ hiding something.”

Murdock laughs again. “Everyone’s hiding something.”

“You more than most, I think,” she says. “I’ve read your file. Well, what wasn’t blacked out or labeled classified, anyway. Not much, but I’m sneaky. I dig around a lot.”

“Yeah?” He props his chin in one hand, still facing away from her. “And what did you find out about me?”

“New Yorker, born and bred.” She steals a sideways glance, focuses on Ward’s truck again. She can see Trip gesticulating wildly through the back window. “Columbia boy, and on scholarship, too. Filled out an application to Columbia Law. Landed a spot, early admittance. They don’t hand those out easy, so you’re probably tipping way past smart and making your way into _brilliant_ territory. Then you turned it down to work for SHIELD, which, considering your background, undergrad thesis, all the rest, tells me they made you an offer that you couldn’t refuse.”

Murdock doesn’t move.

“Graduated the Academy with flying colors, bounced around different positions for about six months before you wound up with the Special Investigative Division. That was three years ago. After that your record gets a lot spottier, but judging by how many cases have been tagged with your name—that I could access, I mean, there were a bunch more that were just stamped _Classified, keep your nose out_ —you do very good work. Probably why they figured they could drag you in here to keep an eye on me.”

“Yeah,” he says. “So what does that say to you?”

“Like I said. You’re smart. Damn smart, all told. But you’re not ambitious. Academy tried to stick you on the fast track, you fell into the SID. Could have gone to Columbia Law, become a lawyer, made a fortune, but you went to SHIELD instead.” Darcy leans back. “Which says that you either have something you want to find, or there’s something you really, really want to prove.”  

“Which would be—what, exactly?”

“I don’t know. Haven’t figured that part out yet.”

He’s quiet, for a minute or two. Then he slips the glass capsule back into her backpack, leaving it there at his feet. “Yeah, well.” He turns towards the windshield, and the sun angles over him just right to bring the faint, trailing scars over his temple into sharp relief. His smile takes a turn, settles somewhere close to forlorn. “When you do, let me know.”

Even she can’t figure out anything to say after that.

Ward takes them along a lot of back roads, past a lot of old growth. There’s a creeping suspicion in the back of her head that he’s trying to get them lost, though why he’d do that, she has no real clue. There’s no way she’s going to be able to make her way out of here and back towards Seattle without a map, a pot of coffee, a GPS, and possibly a helicopter. The tracks get rougher the further up into the mountains they get, backtracking and reversing and shifting into switchbacks that make her head spin. Medicine Lake is in a bowl crafted by three mountains, surrounded by woods and stone. It’s shaped like a peanut that’s grown a third nub, splitting oddly at the top, and that’s where Simmons and the rest of the surveyors had set up their small camp. Though “small” isn’t exactly the word she would use to call the three buildings that have been crafted a few dozen yards from the water. They’re not meant to be permanent, but they’re sturdy nonetheless, and nothing like the tents she was expecting. Darcy clambers up out of the car. The lake gleams grey out of the corner of her eye. “This is more like a beach house than a camp.”

“Don’t ask me how they managed to build it so fast,” Trip says, dragging his duffel bag out of the back of Ward’s truck. “Apparently they just tapped their heels together three times and won some kind of huge government grant.”

“And building it didn’t scare all the animals away?”

“The people who’d know the answer to that question are dead.” Ward slams the driver’s side door, and heaves a backpack over his shoulder. “Come on. Residences are this way, according to the map. Murdock, what are you doing?”

Darcy looks back. Murdock’s standing with his fingertips brushing the hood of their rental car, his head tipped up and to the side. For a second she gets a flash of an image, a fox trying to catch a scent. Then he turns back to them, and he’s just Murdock again, cocking his eyebrows. “Absorbing the atmosphere,” he says, and when Darcy loops her arm through his, he doesn’t protest. 

She doubts very much that the state troopers they’d interviewed had come anywhere near this place, even with their claims of investigating, since everything looks basically untouched. There are three plates of food still sitting on the dining table. Ward doesn’t say anything, but when they get through the door, Trip turns, and cocks his eyebrows at her. “You’re the boss.”

“We should look around.” She glances at Ward. “Wear gloves. I want the scene documented as best as we can manage, when the evidence is all a month old. If anyone _did_ come out here, it was SHIELD removing what they consider to be classified information, and there’s no way we’re going to get our hands on those reports. If they even exist anymore.”

Murdock doesn’t deny this. He hooks his hands into his pockets.

“Coroner ruled the deaths accidental,” says Ward in a deceptively mild voice. Darcy doesn’t look at him, yanking a box of latex gloves out of her backpack and leaving it on the dining table beside one of the rotting plates.

“Because an accident is why Dr. Simmons is scared out of her mind.” She shoves the gloves into Ward’s chest. “This is what you wanted us here for, Detective Ward. To figure out who killed those poor scientists and nearly killed Jemma Simmons. So grow up and wear the damn gloves.”

Ward takes the box, and scowls. When he stalks off, Trip gives her a grimacing apologetic look— _stressed,_ he mouths, though Darcy’s pretty sure it’s less _stress_ and more _asshole extraordinaire_ —and grabs a set of his own before setting off for another room. She hands a third pair to Murdock before fitting a glove over her hand.

“You’re gonna touch things,” she says, when his eyebrows bounce right back up again. “We can’t exactly dust for prints, we don’t have the equipment, but I don’t want to confuse anyone who comes out here later.”

“You think people will come out here later?”

“If this place doesn’t get bombed off the face of the planet as soon as we leave, then that’s my hope, yes.” Darcy makes a face at him. “Don’t fight me like Ward.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” he says, but his lips are twitching.

“You gonna stay in here?”

“With the rotting food? Of course. It’s what I’ve always wanted.”

“Are all SHIELD agents this bratty?” she says, snapping on the other glove. “Or are you just the exception?”

“That depends on who you ask.”

She’s grinning almost in spite of herself when she leaves the room.

The compound runs on a generator, and it must have run out of gas weeks ago. Every fridge, mini or otherwise, is full of food that’s disintegrated into something more closely resembling green sludge. There aren’t any labs in this building; she’s really not looking forward to wading through rotting experiments. It’s still, in here, quiet and dark, the noises of the outside world muffled through the thin walls. There’s something itching under the skin of her spine that feels almost like a nest of spiders. One room for each scientist. Ward’s already taken up residence in the geneticist’s bunk. Trip is nowhere to be seen.

Simmons’s room is at the end, the door wide open and a cardigan slung across the bed as if she’s just left. Darcy considers for a moment, and then picks the thing up, snapping the dust out of it and folding it over her arm. Maybe Simmons will appreciate getting it back, eventually. She’d been keeping the place fairly neatly, though the closet door is standing ajar, and there’s a huge pile of clothes on the floor. She wonders if this was where Simmons hid herself during the attack, or if it had been somewhere else; all the report said was _a closet in the residential units._ Darcy shuts the closet, and looks around at the walls—no photographs, really, aside from Simmons’ SHIELD graduation snap, and a lot of books about biology that she can’t make heads nor tails of. There’s no blood anywhere, no trace of an attack. Not even a broken glass.

She was reading _Heart of Darkness_. There’s something really, really ironic in that. Darcy dog-ears the page, sets the book back on the desk, and starts going through the drawers.

It’s a good hour later when she finally emerges with a great big fat nothing and a side of zilch, and Ward is still rooting around in the geneticist’s bunk. She sneezes twice (he doesn’t jump) and pauses in the door frame, knocking once with her knuckles. “Find anything?”

He straightens, his hands full of papers. “Not exactly. Not that I understand, anyway. Looks like someone’s been through this place already, there are some binders missing.”

“That’s what happens when SHIELD gets involved.” The ceiling light flickers. Darcy shuts her eyes for a moment, curling her fingers into her scarred palm. She forces a smile for Ward. “No wonder those poor troopers couldn’t handle it. This is creepy.”

“I’ve seen worse crime scenes.”

So has she. It’s more than that, she thinks. Something’s hanging in the air, still and silent. It feels like they’re being watched. By the look of things, Ward hasn’t noticed it. He stands there and looks at her for a moment, cocking one eyebrow. His mouth curls a little. “C’mon. You’re not letting this get to you, Lewis, are you? Thought you were the badass lady field agent.”

It could be teasing, if it weren’t for the way he sounds—like he’s looking down at her from three storeys up, and laughing at her. She bites her tongue to keep from snapping, and steps away from the door frame. “Lemme know if you find anything.”

Ward makes a noise that she takes to be a _yes_ in caveman. Darcy lets him be.

Murdock’s still standing in the kitchen, hands on the back of one of the chairs. Well, one hand is. The other’s closed into a loose fist at his side. When she comes in, he lifts his head. “Lewis?”

“Who else?” She grabs a plate off of the table with the very tips of her fingers, and pitches it right into the trash. There’s nothing else for it. Mice have cleaned off the worst of it, but the table still looks furrier than it should. “Detective Ward is a jackass, by the way. We knew that. But he’s a jackass. I don’t blame this Skye girl for ditching him without leaving a forwarding address.”

Murdock frowns. “You think she just left?”

“No, of course not. She’s a part of this, I told you that. I just—he gives me a weird feeling.” She looks down at his hands. “What do you have?”

“I stepped on it,” he says, and that’s a lie, right to her face, because when he uncurls his fingers there’s a bright yellow shotgun shell lying in the middle of his gloved palm. If it had been in the middle of the floor when they’d walked in, she would have seen it. Still, when he offers it to her, she takes it without a word, turning it over between her fingers. “Wasn’t sure what it was.”

“Uh-huh,” she says, hoping that her skepticism comes through. She’s pretty sure it does, just judging how he fades back into _mysterious SHIELD agent half-smile_ again. “It’s a shotgun shell. You stepped on it?”

“By the door.”

She definitely would have seen it. Darcy gives him a long, level look through her eyelashes, and then says, “Sure, Jan.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I believe that you found it. Still wondering about the stepping-on-it part.” She lifts her eyebrows. “Pretty sure there’d be shoe-marks.”

Murdock doesn’t say anything. The smile doesn’t drop. He just stands there, head cocked. In spite of herself, Darcy snorts, and turns the shell casing over in her hand. “Fine, keep your secrets.”

“How is my stepping on something a secret?”

“That’s cute. You should go professional with that.” She flips it upside down, studying the broken end. “You remember if any of the requisition forms you grabbed said anything about a shotgun allocation?”

“It wasn’t supposed to be the sort of mission that required firearms.” He peels off his gloves, and hooks his hands into his pockets. “Maybe one of the other scientists brought it along.”

“Or the wilderness guy, Rodan.” She frowns. “SHIELD didn’t find this when they came through here to get their eyes only crap?”

“Who says they did?”

“The fact that there are files missing. Also the fact that it’s SHIELD.”

Murdock makes a face like, _Point._ “Apparently.”

She rolls the casing one last time, and then draws a plastic bag out of the pocket of her sweater, slipping it inside. “Come on, Houdini. Let’s find Detective Triplett. I have a feeling it’ll be easier to talk to him without Jackass hanging around.”

Trip’s standing outside, a map held in his gloved hands. When Darcy opens the door, his head snaps up. He relaxes, a little. “Oh, it’s you.”

“Who’d you think we were?” She waits until the door’s shut again. “Your partner make you that jumpy, Detective?”

“Ward gets intense sometimes, but he’s okay. This place is giving me the heebie-jeebies, that’s all.”

“Like you’re being watched,” says Murdock, and Trip snaps a glance at him.

“Yeah,” he says, after a moment. “Like you’re being watched.”

“Maybe we are,” says Darcy.

“That’s not a nice thought, _cher_.”

“But a logical deduction,” she says. “What’re you looking at?”

Trip looks down at the map again, still in his gloves, and points. “They were surveying the land all around this area, bordered here, here, and here. See how the forest kind of curls around, here? All of the bodies were found in this general area.” He sketches out a circle with his forefinger. “About a fifteen minute walk that way, from what I can tell. Faster if you run.”

“Do you think they were running?”

“Coroner said intense exertion ante-mortem, not to mention cuts on their legs and their hands, dirt in their shoes—yeah, I’d say they were probably running.” He looks down at the map again. The taped gauze on his cheek is very pale against his skin. “Of course, he also couldn’t really provide a cause of death beyond _lightning strike_ , and the weather up here was clear that day. We have the meteorological reports to prove it.”

“You think something happened, then?”

“I don’t know what happened,” Trip says. “I just know it wasn’t lightning.”

Darcy hums. “What happened to your face, Detective?”

“Hm?” He lifts a hand to his cheek. “This? I scared Dr. Simmons a little bit. Asked the wrong question.”

“What’d you ask?”   

“If she’d been threatened,” he says, easily. His eyes are sharp. “She didn’t take it well.”

No, she wouldn’t, Darcy thinks. She’s pretty sure the only reason Simmons didn’t go for her eyes before Darcy’d pulled _I can’t_ out of her was that she hadn’t actually had enough time to consider it. “Do you think that she’s being threatened?”

Trip blows air through his teeth. He rubs at his jaw. “I think she’s damn scared for someone who isn’t being threatened somehow.”

Well, that puts him five up on his partner, at least. “I looked at the ME’s report, but there wasn’t a lot of trace evidence after they’d been out in the woods for a while.” She glances at Murdock. He’s turned his face away again, towards the trees. “You ever find anything that made you think any of the victims could have been carrying a shotgun?”

“A shotgun?”

“Found a spent casing inside.” She almost says _Murdock found it_ but thinks better of it at the last minute. After all, Trip isn’t SHIELD. He’s not Bureau. He’s definitely not X-Files. The likelihood of him actually believing a blind man tripped over a shotgun shell is even slimmer than it had been with her. “No evidence of any stippling anywhere, and no blood drops, either, but it’s possible someone could have cleaned up. Besides, it’s been a month and a half.”

“Who would they have shot?”

“Whoever was around to make Dr. Simmons feel like she needed to hide in a closet.” Darcy sucks her teeth. “Can I ask you something?”

“Haven’t you been already?” Trip says, but he’s smiling a little. “Do whatever you want, girl, you’re the one leading right now.”

“Hell of a waltz, if I’m the one leading.” He snorts. Darcy rocks back and forth on her feet. “What do you think of Jemma Simmons?”

Abruptly, Trip closes off. His eyes go flat. Next to her, Murdock snaps back into the conversation, shadows hanging around his mouth. “You been talking to Ward?”

“I’m talking to you,” Darcy says. “I just wanted to know what you think of her. It’s not an accusation.”

Trip taps his thumb against the edge of the map. “I think she’s had a really bad month,” he says. “And that she’s strong as hell to come out of it the way she has.”

“Institutionalized?”

“Alive.” He watches Darcy for a moment. “If you’re actually right, and someone _is_ harassing her, we need to get her somewhere safe. There are a couple of places she could stay in town, if she needs it.”

He doesn’t elaborate. She’s still pretty sure that at least one of those places is with him. Darcy rolls that over in her head. “All right, then,” she says. She pulls the map away from him. “Show me where the bodies were found.”

.

.

.

They don’t find anything in the trees. A thousand things have happened in this crime scene since the bodies were taken away. Animals picking their way through the leaves, mussing whatever tracks had been left behind. Rain. A secret government agency. Possibly a mass cover-up. She runs her fingers over the scores in the trees, electric burns that are being slowly eradicated with new growth, and waits for Trip to come to the same conclusion she has, that there’s basically nothing to find out here except some earth that’s a great deal finer and softer than the rest of the muggy gunk around this area, even a month on. (She bags a handful of that to send back to Washington and her lab monkey, slips it into her pocket with the shotgun shell.) Murdock sticks closer to the camp. “To keep an ear on Ward,” he says, in a low voice so Trip doesn’t overhear. He keeps turning his face towards the lake and the woods, as if he’s trying to figure something out. “Remember what Simmons said.”

“The part that you didn’t believe or the part that you sincerely doubt?”

“The part where the lake is bad news,” he says, and Darcy can’t help it. She rolls her eyes, and tugs at the hem of his sleeve. He turns to lift both eyebrows at her, and Darcy drops her hand very fast. _Watch it, girl._

“I’m not stupid, Murdock.”

And she’s not, but whatever the hell is going on at the lake, it’s pretty clear people have killed to keep it hidden. It’s nearly three in the afternoon by the time Trip finally gives up, with nothing more to show than what they already have, and they slog their way back to the campsite with leaves in their hair and mud in their shoes. (Well, Darcy has leaves in her hair; Trip had a slug fall down the back of his shirt.) Ward’s still buried in the archives, going through it page by page. Murdock, on the other hand, has vanished on her. It takes her a full ten minutes (and a hunt through the kitchen to see if she can find any water sources other than the well she’d nearly tripped over on her way back in; she can’t) before she pokes her head through into the lounge, and finds him sitting on the end of the cleaner couch, face blank.

“Whatcha doing?” She swings over the back of the couch and drops down hard into the other corner. Dust flies up her nose. “ _Christ._ ”

“Bless you,” Murdock says, in the moment before she sneezes. In the shadows, the bruise melds his face into the dark. “I was thinking. Did you find anything?”

“Some weird dirt, which I want to get tested, but not much else.” She looks at the window, at the slowly yellowing light. “If we want to get back before dark we should probably leave soon.”

“You want to leave?”

“No, not really. This place creeps the living hell out of me, but if we leave we’re never going to find out anything. Besides, it’s not as if Frost is going to let me in to talk to Simmons again.” She should still probably find someplace with reception and see what’s going on down in Lakewood, though. Darcy tugs her knees up against her chest, rests her chin on her kneecaps. “What were you thinking about?”

“Why SHIELD would be looking into a place like this.”

“Any theories?”

Murdock pushes his glasses up, and rubs at his eyes with one hand. “Too many to count.”

“That’s heartening. At least that’s better than none at all. I think my personal favorite right now is Bigfoot with a modified taser.”

He doesn’t laugh. “Ward hasn’t left the geneticist’s room since we arrived. He’s spending a lot of time going over science reports for someone who claims not to understand any of them.”

“Mm.”

Murdock’s quiet for a whole fifteen seconds before he says, “Say you’re right.”

“What?”

“Say that something is going on up here that someone’s trying to keep hidden.” He fidgets with the hem of his jacket, face turned to the wall. “Who would it be?”

“I have no idea.” Darcy curls tighter around her knees, watching him. “Could be the government. Could be the FBI, they shunted the case into the X-Files when the state police turned it over. Could even be SHIELD, they’re the ones who haven’t done a damn thing to help Jemma Simmons.”

“Yeah.” Murdock turns his head, just enough that she can see his eyes. “If you had to pick one.”

“If I had to pick one? Probably SHIELD.” Murdock tucks his chin in towards his chest. Darcy waits for an explosion, and gets none. “It’s your world, Murdock. You’re a part of that agenda. You should know that better than me.”

“I’m not a part of any agenda,” says Murdock, very quietly.

“Says the self-admitted spy.”

He doesn’t move. “I know you think I’m the enemy here, Lewis, but I’m not. I don’t know how else to say it to get you to believe it.”

That stings, raw skin and rough twine. “I told you. I don’t ever believe anyone the first time. It’s a courtesy.”

“I think we’re at three or four, now.”

“So I’m a courteous girl.”

He goes silent again. Darcy sits, and waits. Eventually, Murdock shifts his weight against the pillows. Dust puffs up like smoke. “If Simmons was reporting through video, then it would have been through satellite uplink. Obviously there’s no way she could get broadband out here, but SHIELD usually has ways around that. Even if we can’t access the connection any longer, she could have kept copies of her recordings.”

“We already know SHIELD’s been through here. And her computer’s gone.”

“Scientists tend to ferret things away in odd places. At least, in my experience. We might get lucky.”

“Let’s hope.” Darcy looks at her watch again. “If we’re going to stay here, I want to get the water bottles out of the back of Ward’s truck. I don’t want to find out at the last minute that the draw on the well is actually from the lake.”

“You’re taking the warning seriously, aren’t you?”

“You’re the one who told me not to go near the place.” she says. She tips her head. “You didn’t believe any of the rest of it. Why this part?”

“Call it an instinct.” Murdock sets his lips into a line, and heaves himself up off the couch. “Besides, if there is a contagion, I don’t really want to be the first one to test it. I’m going to drink water we know is clean.”

“Now who’s being secretive?” she says, but she rolls off the couch and trots after him. She doesn’t want him to walk into a wall.

In the end, they all decide to take rooms for themselves in the residential hall. It’s probably for the best; Darcy doubts Ward could actually be extracted from his paper project, anyway. He’s moved on to organizing things by title and date of writing, though she’s not entirely sure he’s grasping the advanced concepts of genetics and biology, judging by the way he keeps cursing and writing down big science words. She thieves a few files when she goes in to check on him, and none of it makes any sense to her, either. She knows astrophysics, not gene sequencing. Whatever the readouts mean, there’s no way she’s going to know without another degree or three in the mix.

The laboratory section of the camp is a little more wrecked. One of the windows was left open, and there’s a crow’s nest on top of one of the metal cabinets. Thankfully, it’s not being used at the moment, but a great many shiny things have been knocked over, and more of the files are missing. There are whole swaths of them between certain dates (particularly in June, right before the murders) that just…don’t exist at all, regardless of references in other reports, and _damn_ it. _SHIELD_ , she thinks, and slams a drawer shut again. SHIELD: the Scurrilous, Horrifically Interfering, Egregious Lawbreaker Division. She should get that on a damn T-shirt.

“I want to look around the woods more tomorrow,” she says to Trip on her way back into the residential wing. He looks up from his computer (he’s going over the case file, by the look of things), and cocks an eyebrow.

“You think we’re gonna find anything more out there?”

“I think that there has to be something out there that we’re missing.” She pauses. “That or someone.”

Trip looks down the hall (Ward is swearing under his breath again) and then nods. She doesn’t have anything else to add. Darcy smiles as best she can when it feels like someone’s dripping egg yolk down the back of her neck, and locks herself into Simmons’s bunk. She has to fight the urge to shove the armchair up against the door.

Trip has the right idea, though. She stares at the ceiling for hours before she finally digs through her bag, yanks out her computer. The video that was sent to the police (by Lincoln Campbell, an RN from Tacoma Community College) is one of three pieces of surveillance footage on the flash drive Ward had smacked into her hand. She’s seen the first one, of Simmons screaming, but the other two are before and after shots, almost—Jemma Simmons in catatonia, and Jemma Simmons refusing to speak to anyone. It gets her a glimpse of Lincoln Campbell’s face, though, traditionally pretty, blonde as hell and with a kind voice. He’s not much younger than her, in his early twenties, maybe. The background check Ward had run shows nothing of interest.

The second file’s more interesting, though. A few photos of a girl with long, curling hair and sharp dark eyes. One’s attached to an old booking record under the name _Mary Sue Poots_ , but it’s all labeled _Skye._ So there’s that much, at least. “If I were called Mary Sue Poots, I’d change my name too,” Darcy tells the photograph. “Now: who were you looking for up here?”

The photograph, of course, says nothing back, but she feels a little better.

It must be close to midnight when she hears a door open, and shut again. Darcy looks up from her computer screen, blinking at the ceiling, wishing there were windows in these bunks. (If there had been windows, it’s more than possible Simmons would be dead, and she wouldn’t be out here at all. She still kind of wants moonlight right now.) It’s one of the rooms further down the hall, she thinks. Which means it’s either Ward or Trip. Probably getting up to use the bathroom or something, Darcy tells herself, as she checks to make sure her gun is still in the underarm holster, and tugs her coat back on. Probably nothing to worry about. Probably.

She slips out of Simmons’s bunk just as the front door to the residential building clicks shut.

It’s Ward. Of course it’s Ward. He’s been about as suspicious as he could be without holding up a big sign labeled _PLEASE WATCH ME, I’M DANGEROUS_ , and that’s not her paranoia talking, okay? That’s just common sense. She can tell Murdock doesn’t like him all that much either, in spite of the fact that he hasn’t actually said anything more than _SHIELD has strict hiring policies._ He gets tense when Ward’s in range, relaxes again when he’s not. She’d say it’s some kind of alpha male thing if not for the fact that Murdock doesn’t seem interested in the game in the first place. Besides: Ward’s pulled his hood up over his head. Screw the fact that it’s raining, that’s Intro to Creepdom 101. There’s not really anywhere for her to hide, not on the grass. Darcy waits in the door frame until Ward’s disappeared out of sight over the hill, and then darts into the trees.

He’s too big to lose track of. He moves like a cat, though, even on the wet grass. Darcy nearly loses her balance twice trying to keep up with him as he marches straight to the lake, all the way up to the edge of the water. The waves lick at his boots. Ward stands there for a minute or two, hands in his pockets, staring out at the water. He doesn’t move. Rain trickles down the back of her neck and along the length of her spine, freezing cold. Darcy crouches down, her back braced against a tree, and waits.

It doesn’t take too long, all told. Ten minutes, maybe. Fifteen before she notices the small slim figure creeping around the lake from the other side. A woman, she thinks, though it’s possible it could be a man. They move like a woman, whoever they are. Her hood’s up, and her hands are shoved into the pocket. She stops just out of Ward’s reach. The soft rainfall and the distance drowns whatever she has to say. Darcy keeps low, and shuffles through the bushes as quietly as she can until she can hear a snatch of words.

“—in there.”

“Of course she’s in there,” the woman says. She has a low, sweet, rolling voice, like spilling honey. It makes the hair stand up on the back of Darcy’s neck. “She’s found what she’s been looking for. I told you it wasn’t with you.”

“Quit with the fairy tales, Raina.” Ward shifts on his feet, and the next thing he says gets washed away. “—out here.”

“I could. But I won’t.”

“We had a deal.”

“ _You_ had a deal,” says the woman called Raina. “Or thought you had a deal. I never made you any promises about Skye.”

“You don’t want to test me,” says Ward. “I know where your people are hiding. Bring her out here, or I swear—”

“You’ll bring the full weight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation down on our poor unprotected heads?” Raina tips her head. “You used to make better threats, Grant.”

“You promised me you would bring me Skye.”

“No, I promised you that I would bring you answers,” says Raina. “Answers in exchange for one or two small favors. You have your answers. The precious daisy has her own problems, now, Grant, and they’re much bigger than you.”

“I’ve done everything you asked.” Ward isn’t shaking. If anything, he’s far too still. “You owe me, Raina.”

“Well, I’m bad at settling debts.”

Ward moves so fast that Darcy almost doesn’t see the blow, only the aftermath. Raina staggers sideways when he backhands her, nearly falling sideways into the lake. Ward lets out an odd, choked sound, and yanks his hand back up against his chest. He steps away from her. Raina starts to laugh.

“I sting, little bee,” she says. “I’m the thorns on the rose, and by God, I sting.”

“We had a _deal_ ,” Ward says again.

“I don’t deal with animals,” Raina replies, and stalks off into the rain. A minute or two go by before Ward turns, and starts back up the hill to the camp. Darcy sits in her bush long enough that she’s drenched, and looks out at the lake.

.

.

.

Matt snaps awake before the sun is up, jolting, as if someone’s just stuck a taser into his ribs. For a second, he’s not entirely sure why. (—birds, animals, footsteps on wet grass, Trip breathing, Ward across the hall, the buzz of computers and blood, fresh and mixed up with iodine, rotting food and bad water and dust everywhere, coating everything—) Then it comes again, the knock, a little louder this time but still so soft that a regular person might imagine it. It’s Lewis. Her hair’s still damp from wandering around outside. “Murdock,” she says, very quietly. “You awake?”

He shuts his eyes for a moment. Then he rolls out of the borrowed bed (the least offensive of the choices, though the sheets still claw at him, hooking into his skin like needles). The lock on the door is flimsy—all the locks in this building are flimsy—but he undoes the hook and eye anyway. Lewis is back in her boots and heavy jeans, her hair hanging down over her shoulders. She smells like rain, still. “You wanna go exploring before the other two get up?” she says. “Only I don’t think I can wait any longer.”

“It’s not even dawn,” he says without thinking, and then backtracks. Christ, he hasn’t been that sloppy in years. He’d say it was exhaustion if it weren’t for the fact that he’s basically been throwing his senses in Lewis’s face for the past twenty-four hours. He’s not even sure why he started at this point. _A dare?_ Maybe. He’s not usually that stupid, though. _Though to be fair, it’s not as though she hasn’t already guessed something._ “Wait, what time is it?”

Lewis eyes him for a moment. “Four-forty. I’ve been awake all night. Something happened. I don’t want to talk about it in here.”

“And this couldn’t have waited until it was actually light outside?”

“Nope.” She turns her head towards Ward’s door (he hasn’t noticed, pacing too fast to hear the lilt and fall of her voice over his own fury) and then back to Matt. “Meet me in the kitchen?”

 _She’s a good agent,_ Carter had said. _She could have been a great one._ It’s a little more than that, though. She rises and falls and rushes like a rollercoaster, but she doesn’t seem to ever stop moving. The energy coming off her is so contagious that he’s nodding before he realizes what he’s done. Lewis grins at him. “Three minutes, SHIELD Spook,” she says, and then darts off down the hall, humming under her breath. Matt stands in the doorway for a second or two longer, still not entirely sure what just happened, before closing the door, and hunting around for clothes.

She’s pacing when he gets to the kitchen, drawing her thumb in a repetitive line down the middle of her right palm. Over and over and over, like she’s rubbing a worry stone. She doesn’t say anything, just hooks her arm through his and tugs him out the door, and Matt doesn’t protest. Outside the smell of the lake hits him all over again, stark and wild and _raw_ , like something rotting. He has to clench his teeth to keep it from showing on his face.

“I was right,” she says, as soon as they’re halfway down the hill towards the trees. “The woman Ward’s looking for, Skye. She’s here.”

 _I know_. _I heard._ “Did you see her?”

“No, but Ward has a deal with someone up here. Or he thought he did until she hung him out to dry, which, go her. I don’t think he’s used to not getting his way.” _No_ , Matt thinks, thinking of Lewis dressing Ward down in the hospital parking lot, of the slow burn curling through him and the way his fists had clenched. _No, he’s not._ “I don’t know if it’s just her, but there are people living up here, Murdock. Somewhere in the woods, there are people. Ward knows where they are.”

Ward, he thinks, had been lying. His heartbeat had been too scattered for him to be telling the full truth. He might have some idea of location, though, and that’s more than they have right now. “You think he’d tell you about these people even if he knew where they were?”

“Probably not. We could always follow him if we have to. Or tie him up and get him to lead us there like some twisted Jim Hawkins—”

“Because _that’s_ legal.”

“—but if we tried that he might lead us in the wrong direction just to be a brat.” Lewis grins, her lips curving up. “In which case we would tie him to a tree and leave him there for the wolves.”

“Do wolves live in Washington?”

“Don’t be a smartass.” She still doesn’t trust him, he’s pretty sure, but she’s either too tired or too elated to remember her standoffishness at the moment. _She’s lonely_ , he realizes, all in a rush. She wouldn’t be saying a word to him otherwise. _Agent Spooky, the FBI Groundhog._ When was the last time someone actually listened to anything she had to say without laughing at her? He should have realized it sooner. Even outside the surveillance, it’s no wonder she doesn’t trust anyone.

A voice—Luke’s, most definitely—says, in the back of his head, _Sweet Christmas, Murdock, doesn’t that sound familiar?_

“If I had thought I could do it without being noticed last night I would have followed her.”

Matt blinks. “What?”

“You completely checked out, didn’t you,” says Lewis, amused again. “I would have followed her back to their camp if I’d thought I could have. Raina. If she had a deal with Ward where he was doing her favors in exchange for information, that’s…worth looking into.”

“Probably better you didn’t without backup.”

“Please, you’d have turned up eventually, I’m sure.”

True. But he’s signed NDAs that he can’t exactly break. “And what, exactly, is keeping us from just asking Ward about any of this?”

“You think he’d tell the truth? He’s already lied to us once when he told us Dr. Frost knew we were coming; he bullied her into showing us Simmons; he’s meeting mysterious forest-dwellers in the middle of the night during a rainstorm and making deals with them behind our backs. He wants Skye for some reason. Whether it’s because he thinks he’s white-knighting her, or he’s stalking her, or there’s something else entirely that he’s just not mentioned, I don’t want to risk letting on that we know what his deal is. Could send him into a tailspin. If we can get to the camp some other way, then it might work. That, or we can ask Trip. If Ward knows about them, Trip might have some idea.”

“You think he’d be willing to go against his own partner?”

“See, if you say it like that, it sounds like we’re plotting high treason. We’re just trying to get him to catch Ward in a lie, that’s all.”

They’re getting too close to the lake. Matt pushes, just a little, exerts just enough pressure with his arm to turn, and Lewis follows without thinking. He’s fairly certain she’s so lost in thought that he could walk her into a tar pit and she’d just keep talking. “You think Ward is lying about not knowing these people?”

“He’s lying about something. Could be that. Could be something else.” She sets her teeth in her lower lip. “Whoever this woman Raina is, she must have found him somehow. Or he found her somehow. We need to ask around about Grant Ward.”

“It’s a four hour drive down to Lakewood and another four hours back up the trail. You wouldn’t get back here until dark.”

“I’ll tell them I’m going on a supply run. We don’t have enough food to last more than another day, and it’s probably going to take longer than that to go through everything that’s been left out here. Besides, I was thinking about driving down to a cell tower, anyway. I need to call Dr. Frost, make sure nothing’s happened.”

“You think she’ll pick up?”

“I can always get Trip to call her if I need to, but I don’t think I will. She’s not stupid; she knows that whatever’s going on we’re the best option for Dr. Simmons’s survival right now.”  

“Take Trip,” Matt says after a moment. “You might be able to get an answer or two out of him during the drive.”

“You okay being stuck up here with Ward?” She doesn’t sound worried. Her voice curls too much for that. She sounds _amused_ , and something prickles in the back of his throat when he realizes it. His lips twitch. “I wouldn’t want for him to lock you in a closet and keep you from eavesdropping too much.”

“I doubt Ward is going to do anything more than what he did yesterday,” he says. “But if he does go somewhere, I think it’ll work out.”

Lewis slips her arm out of his. Matt stops— _think about it, if she’s not leading you, you don’t know where you are_ —as she takes a few steps forward, beyond the edge of the woods. Then she turns back and looks at him, head tipped. “You sure you don’t wanna tell me about your little magic trick?” she says. “Because I’m about ninety percent sure I know what it is already.”

“I don’t have a magic trick.”

“Sure you don’t, Mr. I-Just-Happened-To-Step-On-A-Shotgun-Shell.”

He’s smiling a little. Matt lifts his head, shuts his eyes behind his glasses. The smell of the lake burns like battery acid in the back of his throat. “So, what is it you think I can do?”

“You gonna tell me if I’ve guessed right?”

“Even if I could, hypothetically, do something,” he says, “what makes you think I’d be allowed to say anything about it?”

Her lips part into an _oh_ shape. Lewis catches a leaf, and rolls it between her fingers. “Are you telling me you’re a matter of national security?”

She sounds so delighted that he can’t help it. Matt starts laughing. It takes a good three minutes before he can get himself to stop.

.

.

.

They’re two hours down the road and nearly back into cell range when Darcy turns in the passenger’s seat, and says, “Why is Ward so interested in Skye?”

Trip doesn’t react. He keeps his eyes on the road, his hands steady on the wheel. She’d let him drive just because he’d been the one to get him and Ward up to the camp; he knows for sure where they’re going, how to get back and forth. Besides—she might not trust him, but she has a little more faith that he won’t just dump her on the side of the road the moment she asks the wrong question. She doesn’t have that kind of faith in Ward. “Ward’s interested in every missing person in our area. Kind of his thing.”

“Oh, cut the crap, Trip.” She props her chin in her hand. “I might be cute, but I’m not stupid. The guy bullied Emma Frost into getting us in to see Simmons by threatening to have her arrested, and I really, really doubt it’s because of the answers Simmons could give us. He’d already interviewed her. _You’d_ already interviewed her. You’d have known she’d have exactly squat to say to me and Murdock.”

“Clearly, she didn’t, otherwise you wouldn’t be still snooping around out here.”

“Apparently I’m just better at listening to silence than any of the rest of you,” Darcy says. Trip scoffs a little. “Ward probably didn’t expect a damn thing from Jemma Simmons about the dead scientists, or about her work out here, and you know it. So—” she does a little drumroll against the dashboard. “The only thing I can figure is that he thought we’d be able to get him to Skye. I know he thinks Skye’s out in those woods somewhere.”

Trip goes still. “What makes you say that?”

“I followed him last night.”

“You _followed_ —”

“He left the camp in the middle of the night without telling anyone where he was going or what he was doing and you think I wasn’t gonna follow him? Tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing if it were me or Murdock.”

“You, sure,” says Trip. “But Murdock’s blind, he’s not going anywhere.”

She bats that away with one hand. “Ward met someone, down by the lake. Her name was Raina. She said something about a deal.”

“What deal?”

“I didn’t hear all the details, just that he’s been doing things for her so she’d eventually bring him to Skye.”

Trip closes his eyes just long enough that Darcy starts watching the road. He knocks his head against the back of his seat. “Damn it.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just—I thought he was kidding.”

“About what?”

“Raina. He said she was just another one of those UFO crazies trying to make her mark out here.”

Wait, back up. “You _know_ Raina?”

“Yeah, met her a few months ago. Right after Skye went missing. Never saw her face, just—heard her voice. She had a sweatshirt on, kept the hood up the whole time. Grabbed Ward on our way out from a crime scene, talked to him a little. He didn’t seem like he took her seriously at all, just said that like—that she said she knew Skye, and he was gonna check up on her to make sure she had no idea where Skye was. He never mentioned her again.” He slams a hand down hard onto the wheel. “I thought she was a damn _joke_.”

“Yeah, because so far as I can tell, Ward’s a regular Charlie Chaplin.”

“Very funny,” says Trip, and whacks the wheel again. “ _Damn_ it. He told me he was over this.”

“Over what?”

The radio switches over to a weather report. Darcy whacks at the button, shutting up the air personality. He’s drumming his fingers against the wheel. Trip opens his mouth, and shuts it. Then he says, “Look, I don’t want to make you think that there was something weird going on—”

“But there was something weird going on,” Darcy says, and Trip winces.

“I don’t know, girl. Ward’s always been a little out there. Really good at his job, that’s for damn sure, and that’s why it didn’t bother me, not at first, but—I dunno. It took a while for me to notice. He never talked about her much, Skye, but I met her a few times when she was working at that diner. She was smart. Driven. Witty as hell. I liked her, thought it’d be nice if she stuck around. Nice girl. She and Ward used to talk about SHIELD sometimes.”

“She applied?”

“No, but she knew some stuff about them. I think she hacked them once or twice, but I never heard that story.” He lifts a hand to the bandage on his cheek, drops it back down. “Then they argued about something, her and Ward. She left the diner. When she went missing, Ward was convinced she’d come up to Medicine Lake, but like—God. You really think she’s up there?”

“I’m positive.”

“What’s she doing out here?”

Darcy shrugs. “Ward said she was searching for something. Dunno what, but she thought it was out at the lake. Whatever it was, I’d say she found it.”

Trip mutters under his breath.

“He wants Skye, Trip. So far as I can tell, every part of what he’s done has been a way to get to her. Not to solve this case, to find that girl.”

He shakes his head. “He’s not that stupid.”

“Sometimes people get stupid when they get rejected.”

“Not Ward. He wouldn’t—”

“Look, he’s your partner. I get that. But whatever he’s trying to do, he’s walking a really thin line.” She blows air through her nose. “I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, still, but just—Trip. I need you to tell me everything you know about Ward, and everything you know about Skye.”

“I don’t know anything about Skye. _No_ one knows anything about Skye. I don’t think Skye even knows anything about Skye.” Trip heaves a breath. “Look, she said she had no idea who she was or where she came from, just—someone dumped her in an orphanage when she was a kid and left. She didn’t talk about it much.”

 _Ah._ That, right there—that fits. “And Ward?”

“Ward’s more complicated.”

With a little trill, her phone comes back online. It only takes a few seconds before the texts come in. Three from Helen Cho, she can look at those later; the fresh autopsies shouldn’t tell her anything she doesn’t already know about. Something from Sharon. ( _Be nice to the new liaison, he’s funny._ ) And thirteen missed calls from one Dr. Emma Frost. Darcy bites her tongue hard enough to sting. “Goddammit.”

“What?”

“Frost.” She hits redial. “We’re not done talking about this, Trip.”

“I’m not that lucky,” Trip says, resettling his hands on the wheel.

.

.

.

Lewis, Trip, and the truck are barely out of sight when Ward tells him he’s going for a walk around the lake. He’s lying—the tick in his heartbeat is subtle, but it’s there, an echo in a canyon—but Matt just nods once and makes up something about listening to some recordings he found in the geologist’s room. Ward buys it, or Matt’s pretty sure he does, because he just grabs his jacket and heads out the front door. There are fresh bandages on his right hand, blood hanging around him like a curse. The man doesn’t look back. Matt waits until Ward’s out of sight behind the hill, and then he leans his cane up against the wall near the front door, and digs his batons and his satellite phone out of his bag.

Nobody’s been here for a month, according to the reports. A month of nothing, no visitors, no activity, it should have killed any scents that he could have used. There should be nothing here but dust and animal smells, the old tang of rotting food. But there are three fresh trails here, three he doesn’t recognize. One of them—he’s fairly sure one of them is the woman Ward met, because there had been a sharp, citrusy smell embedded in the wounds on Ward’s hand that’s also hanging like smoke in the botanical lab. Raina. _I’m the thorns on the rose,_ she’d said. _By God, do I sting._ Even under the bandages, Matt had caught the echo of the empty spaces, the deep punctures in his palm. Holes through the meat of his hand, like he’d slammed it down over nails. _Like the man with broken bones,_ he thinks. _A puncture wound, thin and circular_ _._ Here maybe three days ago. She’d touched two filing cabinets, but she hadn’t gone through them. There had been a man with her, and he’d gone through a cabinet or five before heading into Simmons’s room. He’d worn too much aftershave, enough that Matt kind of wants to sneeze even days later. And then there’d been a third, another woman. Tea tree oil hangs in the places she’d touched.

_What was left for them to find?_

They’d come in through the door in the residential wing, ignored all the bedrooms besides Simmons’s. Gone through it. Then over to the lab, sneaking a file or two, taking something from the fridge. He doesn’t have to run his fingertips over the labels to know that it had been a vial of lake water. _They want us not to look at the lake._ Simmons, her heart pounding. _Don’t touch it, don’t drink it, don’t even step in the mud. Don’t go into the lake._ And the lake itself is—it’s sharp, but in a different way than Raina is, sharp like blades and acid and sparks. Like flesh coming off a shattered bone. _Don’t go into the lake._ Why? It’s not poisonous—there are fish in the lake, he’s certain of that much—but…no. Something inside his skin creeps at the thought of touching the water. The smell or the warning or his instincts or all three, he has no idea. Just—it rings through him. _Don’t go into the lake._

_I get it. Don’t go into the lake. Maybe don’t start messing around with the lake in the first place, did you ever think of that?_

Nothing makes sense. Or, rather, too many things make sense, and he really, really doesn’t like the pattern that’s forming. Whatever’s going on with the lake, they don’t have the equipment to analyze it. SHIELD obviously had been trying, and SHIELD had wound up with a load of nothing, judging by how they’d left this place to rot. (There’s something about the way they’ve left the buildings up that pricks at him, though, tugs at his common sense, because SHIELD _wouldn’t_ have left anything standing unless they’d planned to come back, and if they plan to come back—) Simmons’s reports would have the information, but Simmons is essentially comatose, her reports are long gone, and unless somehow someone’s hidden photocopies underneath the floorboards, he can’t think of a single reason that would get the people at SHIELD to hand them over.

Matt braces his thumbs to his eyes, lets out a breath. _Think._ Simmons’s computer could have something. _Coulson_ could have something. But Coulson’s gone dark, and the whole thing is classified. _Damn it._ Simmons, the shotgun, the trio of searchers. And Skye. _Why Skye?_ The key for Ward’s presence here, at least. _She’s looking for someone._ One of the people who live up here? _Why do they live up here?_ They live in secret. To get away from the rest of the world, to protect themselves? Or to make sure the rest of the world is safe from them?

_I’m the thorns on the rose, and by God, do I sting._

He can track the scents back to their source, but he’s not about to do that in daylight; there are too many ways it could go wrong, especially with Ward out wandering around trying to figure out where Raina and her people are hiding. Ward’s not stupid, after all. _Christ, I wish he were stupid_. But Lewis is gone for the next seven hours at least, and until then it’s only him and Ward up here. There’s not much he can do without giving himself away. He could use the satellite phone, call someone at SHIELD, but Lewis is right. If any single organization has had the most influence over keeping this buried, it’s SHIELD, and they won’t appreciate him trying to dig it up.

 _Think, Matt. What do you even have?_ The shotgun shell, used. The shotgun itself (long gone, who knows where) had belonged to the wilderness expert, Rodan; he’d caught traces of gunpowder and metal in the man’s room that hadn’t matched up with Ward’s sidearm. Fired in the kitchen. Into a person, he’s pretty sure. The scents have decayed so much that he can’t be certain, but he thinks there’s still traces of blood underneath the linoleum. The shell had been kicked underneath the heavy cabinet next to the door—he’d had to lie flat and stretch to reach it—and ignored by SHIELD when they’d come through. _Think._ The blood means someone was wounded. That someone is probably out with Raina and whoever else is living in the woods. And whoever’s in the woods, he thinks, something building in the back of his head, whoever’s in the woods wanted something that they’d thought SHIELD had left behind. The lake water, and something else. Something they’d gone through Simmons’s things for, and hadn’t found.

_Scientists squirrel things away._

If Simmons hid something, then—

Matt stills, and turns his head. _Someone’s coming._ There’s only a moment of warning, a flickering. A stirring in the air. Outside, out of sight of the woods. Then there are two people standing at the back door. One of them smells like tea tree oil. The other one, a man—he’s like the lake, sharp and cracking. And, Matt realizes, like blood. When he moves, it’s like the air screams. “Fifteen minutes,” says the man. He’s wearing sunglasses, even with the clouds. There’s something wrong with his face. There’s something he can’t quite pin down, not at this distance, but something’s wrong with his face. “I can’t give you any more time than that.”

“Fifteen minutes is all I need,” says the woman, and raises her bag. “I have all my crap already set up. C’mon, Gordon, you’re acting like this is my first time hacking into SHIELD.”

“If Jiaying notices that you’re gone, she’ll be concerned.”

“She thinks I’m in the shower. Anyway, it’s not as if I’m doing anything _wrong_. I’m helping you guys. If I can get into the SHIELD mainframe, then I can figure out if they know anything about your location. I can scrub it if I have to.”

“If you scrub it they’ll know someone was in the system, just check to see if they know.” Gordon sounds…there’s sweat on his palms. _He’s nervous._ “Why here? Anywhere else on the planet—”

“We know from the flash drive that SHIELD had a satellite tasked to this place. They want to come back. It’s probably still aimed right at our heads. You just need to be a boss to access it.” She makes a shooing motion with her hands. “You’re using up my time. And Jiaying will notice if you and I are _both_ out of sight for fifteen minutes. Go away, Gordon, you’re ruining my groove.”

“Fine,” says the man named Gordon— _he has no eyes_ , Matt realizes, with an odd sort of sickness in his stomach. Then the atmosphere—it _cracks_ , like someone’s ripped it open. It happens so fast that he can only just process it, the snapping, and then the tea tree woman is standing alone by the back door, and the air is as it was, settled. Dust motes spiral through the space Gordon left behind. The woman takes a huge breath. Matt shifts out of sight of the door as she lets herself in.

“I know you’re in here somewhere,” says the woman, dumping her bag on the tabletop. She raises her voice. “I saw Ward leave, and I told them you went with Trip and the FBI woman, but you didn’t. I need to talk to you, SHIELD guy.”

 _Trap_ , he thinks. Matt touches his fingertips to his batons, tucked into the small of his back. If he needs to, he can probably take her down. Probably.

( _Air doesn’t just disappear, what the hell is going on, who are these people, what—_ )

(— _the kind of special that most people can only find in science fiction_ —)

“Come on,” says the woman, and yanks out her computer. A computer. _Skye_ , he thinks. The hacker. There’s heat lancing up into her cheeks, tears in her eyes. She wipes them away with a little hiss, like they’re pissing her off. “Just—I need to talk to you. Please, we don’t have any time.”

In the back of his head, there’s an echo. _Think, Matty, come on. Put it together._ He drops his hand away from the batons. “Time for what?” he says, and Skye lets out a shivering breath. She tips, trying to see around the corner.

“Time to save Simmons,” she says.

.

.

.

“What the hell do you mean, Simmons is gone?”

Frost hasn’t slept. Darcy can tell in the way she’s holding herself, how she keeps tugging at the hem of her cardigan. There are rings under her eyes, and her platinum hair is drawn back into a bun so tight that it looks about ready to explode. “I mean she’s not in her room, she’s not anywhere in the hospital. No one’s seen her since rounds at three this morning. We didn’t realize she was gone until about nine when I let myself in to check on her, and you were already out of range by then.”

Trip curses, and slams the door of the truck. “I thought you said nobody could get into that room without a key and a code!”

Frost lets out a hiss like a cat. Her eyes narrow. “Nobody can get in or out of that room unless I let them into it, so don’t you dare yell at me, Antoine Triplett.”

“Trip,” says Darcy, when Trip opens his mouth. He looks at her sidelong, and then turns away. “Dr. Frost. Explain, please.”

“There’s no way into that room if you don’t have my card.” She holds it up, flashing it at them as if to say, _here’s your proof._ “You saw how it was organized. The door’s timed and key-coded. We keep a log of every single time it’s opened. There are bars on the windows, the security system was on, everything was shut down for the night. There’s no way she could have—there’s no possible way she could have managed to get anywhere. But she’s gone.”

Darcy rubs her hands over her face, pushing her glasses hard into the bridge of her nose. Trip is buzzing with nervous energy. “Goddammit. Did you put a man in her room like I said?”

“No.”

“God _dammit_.”

“There’s something you need to see.” Frost folds her hands into knots. “We should go to my office.”

Frost’s office is freezing cold. There’s a space heater by the door, but it’s off. She doesn’t turn it on. Darcy’s fighting the urge to tuck her hands into her armpits as Frost drops down into her chair, taps at the mousepad. “All the rooms have some sort of surveillance equipment inside them,” she says. “It was installed in case one of my patients ever indicated they had self-harming or violent tendencies. I don’t generally run them on the regular patients, but Jemma—well.” She swallows. “It’s better if you see it.”

“See what?”

Frost taps a few keys. “She had help.”

“She had—” Trip makes a strangled little sound in the back of his throat. “She didn’t know anyone here, Emma. That’s why they placed her with you. They didn’t have anywhere else to put her. No one came forward.”

“Just—” Frost is shaking. When Darcy puts a hand to her shoulder, she jumps, but she doesn’t shrug it away. “Just watch.”

There’s a timestamp in the bottom right-hand corner of the video feed. _03:38:26._ The camera’s settled in the upper left-hand corner of the room. The door’s in view, but mostly it’s the bed that Darcy’s interested in. Simmons is asleep, lying on her side, hands curled underneath the pillow. “Is she sedated?”

“No.” Frost’s nose wrinkles. “After you left, she was…strikingly lucid. I didn’t see the need to put her back under.”

“She was always lucid.”

“That’s a matter of opinion.” Frost stabs a finger at the computer. “Look, there. Three-thirty-nine. You see it?”

The light from the window pools like liquid silver on the floor of Simmons’s room. For a second, Darcy’s not entirely sure what Dr. Frost is talking about. Then it flickers again, a scrap of shadow, something that hadn’t existed before. Trip sucks in a breath through his teeth when a man in a dark pea coat steps out of nowhere, out from the camera’s blind spot. He’s wearing sunglasses. “Who—”

“I don’t know.”

“Did he know the camera was here?”

“I’ve kept it off since the incident with Lincoln. I didn’t need more footage of Dr. Simmons being bandied about different government agencies. If this guy did know it exists, he probably didn’t think it was on.”

The man in the sunglasses stands like a crow at the head of Simmons’s bed, and then claps a hand over her mouth. She comes awake in a rush, flailing, scraping with her nails, but Simmons has been bedridden for days. It only takes him a second to drag her out of the bed, twist her arm up behind her back. He loses his grip on her mouth. “ _Don’t_ ,” Simmons says, and it’s a shriek, a scream. “ _Don’t, don’t take me back, I didn’t say anything, don’t_ —”

Darcy can almost hear it, the snap of the tracker kicking in. Simmons throws her head back, a hand going to her face. Her knees go out from under her. There’s blood running over her mouth and chin when the man in the glasses heaves her up into a fireman’s carry, steps out of line of the camera. “Christ,” says Trip, and turns away from the video, but Darcy keeps watching. She’s not even sure she can blink. There’s a crackling pop, like someone snapping a piece of half-melted plastic in two, and everything goes abruptly quiet again. Frost pauses the feed.

“I didn’t hear anything,” she says. “Nobody heard anything.”

“You call that _help_?” Trip says, and stalks out of the room. She thinks he might just head right back outside, but instead he makes a furious little noise, and starts pacing in the hallway.

“How did he get in?” Darcy says.

“I don’t know.” Frost’s eyes are wet. She’s angry, Darcy thinks, not frightened. She shakes her head. “None of the other cameras picked him up, I’ve already checked. It’s like he came through the walls, but—but the window was locked, and the bars weren’t touched, and just—he _never_ came in. And the door logs—no one went into that room. No one swiped a card, no one typed in a code. But she’s gone, and I don’t know where the hell she went.”

“Have you called the police?”

“I called you,” Frost snaps. “You were out of range.”

“After I stepped all over your toes?” Darcy leans back away from the desk. Her head’s swimming. _Keep it together._ “Why not the local troopers?”

“You really think the police would believe I had nothing to do with this?” Frost shoves away from the desk. “I didn’t want this woman here in the first place. I didn’t want SHIELD sniffing through my things, going over my patients. And then everything happened with Lincoln, and with Ward—where are you going?”

“What’s the code to the room?”

“There’s nothing in there, I told you already—”

“And I believe you, I just—I need to check something.”

“Check what?” says Trip from the hall.

“Whether or not the carpet’s burned,” Darcy says, and pushes past him before they come up with something else to keep her still.

.

.

.

“You’re the woman Ward’s looking for,” says Matt. “You’re Skye.”

“Four for you, Glen Coco.” Skye taps at the mousepad of her computer, and pulls her legs up into a lotus position on the chair. “Not many other people I could be, though to be honest the federal government probably thinks I’m like…six different women at this point. I had to jump around with different aliases, people kept getting mad at me. I think Kentucky still has a warrant out for Mary Sue Poots.”

“What’s happened to Jemma Simmons?”

“I don’t know.” There’s a soft hiss from the computer as the fan starts up. “I just know they have her, and they’re probably gonna do something—something kind of really bad and not-at-all legal, so like…shut up and listen to me, okay?”

“You know a lot of people have been searching for you.”

“That’s bull, because the only person who’s been looking for me at all is Grant Ward. And if I’m as good as I know I am, then he’s not gonna find me if I have any damn thing to say about it.” Skye hooks her hair behind her ears with both hands. “You wouldn’t wanna share your log-in to the SHIELD mainframe, would you? In a sudden surge of, you know. Human decency.”

“Rather not.”

“I knew they pulled people’s souls out through their noses as part of the final exam,” says Skye. She keeps typing. “I thought you people were supposed to be helping the helpless.”

“We’re not the A-Team.”

“That’s for damn sure.” She cuts him a look. “I already told you, I don’t have a lot of time. Gordon’s gonna be back early just in case I’m doing, you know, exactly this, and if he figures out I’m talking to you I’m basically grounded for life in like…the worst possible way, so you just need to shut up and listen. Okay?”

“Generally not the best at that.”

“Of course you aren’t,” says Skye. “Why couldn’t I get the cooperative one?”

“You did.”

“Of course I did,” she mutters. Matt nearly grinds his teeth.

“Answer a few of my questions, I’ll listen to you then.”

“We don’t have _time_ for that!”

“So we’ll talk fast,” he says, and Skye heaves a breath through her nose like an exasperated high-schooler. “Where the hell have you been the past two months?”

“Staying with friends.”

Truth. Or not a lie, anyway. “Detective Ward thinks you were abducted.”

“Well, I wasn’t.”

Truth, again. “Who are you staying with?”

“Can’t say,” says Skye. “Kind of promised.”

 _Christ._ He listens, but he can’t hear anything like the whine he remembers from Simmons’s hospital room. _I can’t believe I’m actually asking this, but—_ “Do you have an implant?”

“An _implant_?” Skye says, and for the first time her hands still on the keyboard. “What, like breast implants? Do you think I’m a cyborg?”

“Small,” he says, and measures it out with his thumb and forefinger. “They would have put it up your nose.”

“The hell.” Her heart’s skipped, skidded. “No, I don’t—did they give one to _Jemma_? They _chipped_ Jemma? What the actual—”

“You don’t, then.”

“No, I don’t have an implant up my nose! I would remember them putting one there, I think—is Simmons—”

“You wanna tell me what’s going on, you answer me first.” He digs his nails into the tabletop. “Why are you avoiding Ward?”

“Because he’s a sociopath and a monster and he didn’t like me telling him no.” And that’s all truth, too, or what she thinks is the truth, because even though her heart’s sprinting, it doesn’t jolt.

“What do you mean, he’s a monster?”

“You haven’t worked that out yourself, yet?”

“We’ve only been here two days.”

Skye wavers. “Look, he said some stuff about like—some kind of organization he works for, I don’t know. I thought it was a branch of the state police until I came up here. He didn’t tell me much about it, just—just that they might be able to help me.”

“Who’s they?”

“You should ask him that.”

Matt scoffs. “I get the feeling he wouldn’t tell me.”

“Yeah, well, that’s probably because he’s a misogynist pig who has consent issues,” Skye snaps, and fists her hands up on the keyboard just for a second. “I’m not talking about Ward anymore.”

 _Jackass,_ Lewis had called him. And Raina, staggering sideways, bloody and bruised after laughing in Grant Ward’s face. “Did he attack you?”

“He tried,” says Skye. “He didn’t like the result.”

Matt files that away. “How do you know Jemma Simmons?”

“Dude, I was out here for like three weeks on and off before I finally _vanished_ , quote-unquote. I met the scientists. And that’s not the point.” She whacks at the enter key a few times with her pinky, and curses under her breath. “You should probably tell your techs that they need to cool their jets with the firewalls, it’s not like anyone’s trying to come in through the front door.”

“Skye—”

“They think Jemma took something,” says Skye, without any preamble. “Or, well, not exactly. They think Jemma saw something, and filmed it, and they can’t find the film. I can’t tell you who they are or what they think she saw, because that’s like…classified as all hell, in government speak. But they think she knows something she doesn’t, they think she caught it on camera, and they’re trying to figure out where she put it so the information doesn’t get leaked.”

“If that’s the case,” Matt says, “why didn’t they just take her in the first place?”

“I asked them not to,” says Skye, very tightly.

“And they listen to you?”

“I thought they did.” She blows out air. “She was doing fine, they said. She’d gone home, she hadn’t said a word, and then the pair of you showed up and started asking her all those questions—”

“She was being kept in a psychiatric institute under heavy sedation.”

“I know that _now_.” Skye’s eyes are wet again. “That’s not what they told me, but—but I know that now. I figured that out two weeks ago, and I—I had someone leak it, I knew that if it was leaked someone would look, but just—”

“You’re the one that sent Ward the surveillance footage?”

“I didn’t send it to _Ward._ ” She spits the name. “Lincoln worked in the psych ward, that’s why he was there, he helped me get the footage and I sent it to the police—”

“Lincoln Campbell is one of the people out here?”

She ignores that. “I have no idea how Ward managed to get his hands on it, he must have had it flagged or something even though I could have sworn I disabled all his search functions when I left—”

 _Raina,_ Matt thinks. “Skye, slow down—”

“They took Simmons, okay?” She’s breathing too fast, and her hands are flying over the keyboard. He should probably say something about her hacking into SHIELD, considering his ID. And his job. And the fact that she’s doing it right in front of him. He doesn’t say a word. “They—they don’t even know that I know that they have her, I—I woke up last night and I saw her as they were bringing her in, that’s why this is a secret. You just—if she _did_ hide that footage, you have to find it before they do.”

“And where would she have hidden it?”

She whacks at the keyboard again, and then says, “ _Hah._ Your code sucks, SHIELD Agent, just FYI.”

“I’ll let people know. Where are we supposed to be looking? Your people have torn this place apart. _We’ve_ torn this place apart. There’s no evidence anywhere that Simmons hid any kind of video footage.”

“I don’t _know_ where you would look, okay?” Skye turns her face up to him. “I don’t know. Only Simmons knows.”

“What were the scientists researching, up here?”

Skye’s lips thin. “I can’t tell you that.”

“Whatever they were looking for, they wound up _dead_ because of it, Skye. You don’t tell me what you know, then it makes it that much harder to make sure the people who killed them get what they deserve.”

Her heart doesn’t just skip. It lurches, it falls and lands like a body on a sidewalk, and it makes his stomach twist to listen to. She turns away from him, back to the computer.

“Skye.” She goes still, just for a moment, just for a second, but it’s an answer. “Skye, if you know anything about what happened to those scientists—”

Skye swallows. “It was an accident. I didn’t mean—” Her hands are shaking. “I just—he came at me with a shotgun and I was scared, I didn’t mean to hurt anyone—”

“Who came at you?”

“Rodan,” she says, and that matches up with the scents, at least. “Rodan, he—he shot Gordon, he tried to shoot me, out in the woods, and I didn’t mean to hurt him, I just—I panicked, and I don’t—”

“So you stabbed him in the throat because you panicked?”

Her heart lurches in her chest again, badly enough that it makes his stomach churn. She puts a hand up to her mouth, and then lowers it. “No, I didn’t—I didn’t stab him, that’s not what happened, I—”

“What did you do, Skye?”

“I _didn’t stab him_.”

Truth, somehow. “Then what did you do?”

She shuts her mouth up tight, and shakes her head.

“Skye,” Matt says, and he reaches out and grabs her elbow. The air in the room _buzzes_. Not in the same way it did with Gordon, like—like someone’s thrown them in a maraca, he thinks, and started shaking it. “Skye, you need to tell me what happened. Five people are dead because of this.”

“ _What?_ ” She wrenches out of his grip, and the air stills again, steadies. “No, there was—there was only Rodan, Rodan was the one who came at me, and I didn’t mean to hurt him, I swear—”

“SHIELD pulled five dead bodies out of these woods, not one.” _A wound like a needle, long and thin. Cause of death: exsanguination._ “Rodan was stabbed, but the other four weren’t, Skye. Who killed the other four scientists?”

“I don’t know.”

“If you’re lying to me—”

“I don’t _know._ ”   

He listens. Then, slowly, he unfolds his hands from fists. “I believe you.”

“I don’t—what?”

“I believe you,” he says, again. “About Rodan. And the other scientists. You don’t know. Not for sure.”

“There’s no reason for you to believe me.” She shakes her head. “Why do you believe me?”

“Let’s just say I have good instincts.”

Skye trembles. She passes a hand over her face, presses her palms to her eyes. Then she shakes her hair back, and looks at him again. “How did they die?”

 _Lightning,_ he thinks. “Electric shock.”

She shuts her eyes, and says nothing. Her breathing goes ragged. “Oh, God.”

“You know how it happened, don’t you?”

Skye shakes her head. Her pulse thumps in his ears. “I can’t—oh, _God_.”

 _Ease back, Murdock. Prioritize._ “If you’re right, Skye, then—then Simmons probably doesn’t have a lot of time. The chip they put into her is…effective, from what I’ve been told. They can use it to kill her, if they want, which is something we’re both trying to stop. Whatever they’re looking for, I can’t find it lost in the dark like this. Not before Simmons gets hurt.”

“They haven’t even told me straight out what they think she has.” Her voice hardens. “They think I’m a little girl that needs to be protected from all of this, which, hah. Normally I’d hack my way into it, but they don’t keep any information online, they don’t have a digital presence, it’s why I couldn’t just—hack the surveillance at the psych hospital. They’re completely off the grid, it _sucks,_ and just—” She hits a few more keys. “I’m printing out two copies of the mission reports and files that I can access through the old data trails on this satellite network.”

“You’re in the network?”

“All your binary are belong to me,” says Skye. “I can get in anywhere. Well, with time, anyway.”

Matt presses a fist to his mouth, just for a moment. “Check to see if there were any video uploads through the network. Would there be a record of that?”

“Who uploaded them?”

“Simmons.”

She presses her lips together, and goes back to her keyboard. “I won’t be able to get into a second account before Gordon gets back. Hacking isn’t like it is in movies. Without her password I’d have to run skeleton programs and even with most of your firewalls accounted for—seriously, talk to people, they kind of suck—it would take time I don’t have.”

“Could you coach someone else into getting into it?”

“Not at a distance.” Skye eyes him. “Besides, I don’t think you’d be much help.”

He waves that off. “If you get the chance, there might be something in those videos. Simmons submitted daily reports, she might have mentioned something during the recordings.”

“Yeah,” says Skye. “I know, I was in some of them. None of the official like—report reports, but her video diary, I was in some of those.”

A video diary? “Where’d she keep the files?”

“On her computer. She didn’t even back them up,” Skye says, with the disgust of someone who spends more time around computers than around people. “And—and I couldn’t find her laptop, after SHIELD came and went. They must have taken it.”

Damn it. He knocks his fist to his mouth again, carefully. “I need to know what they think Simmons has on them, Skye.”

“I’ve _told you_ , I don’t know what that is. It’s not like you can just—ask around and find out—”

“No,” he says. “Not unless you take me to the camp.”

“What camp?” says Skye, but she bites down hard on her tongue, hard enough for him to hear it. Matt scoffs.

“Don’t be coy.”

“I’m not being coy. You think I can take you to—to where I’ve been staying? I don’t even know where it _is_. I get taken there myself, I couldn’t lead you there if I tried.”

The aborted scents. Skye and Gordon, appearing out of nowhere. Gordon vanishing through a crack in the air. _Damn it._ “Stay there,” he says, and then goes to dig in his bag again.

Every SHIELD badge has a small tracking chip, buried in the seam where leather folds over metal. Matt had long since figured out how to peel the metal eagle out of the leather case and get at it, though why he’d felt the need to do it in the first place he wasn’t entirely sure. As an insurance policy, he thinks, or maybe a getaway plan. He works for SHIELD because of a lot of reasons, because he’d thought—who knows what he’d thought anymore. Still, he’d done it anyway, and now he can pop the logo out of the case and draw free the tracker with about as much effort as opening a can of soda. “Take this,” he says, and offers it to Skye. She looks at the tracker against his palm, and then up at his face again. “You want us to help Simmons, you have to tell us where she is.”

“I _can’t,_ ” Skye says. It’s not the same as the _I can’t_ from Jemma Simmons, not the same terror, not the same frustration. It’s garbled, awful and heartbroken. “I just—I can’t do that. I can’t give them away.”

“They took your friend. People are _dead._ ”

“They’re scared, they don’t know if Simmons knows something, they’re not—they’re not trying to hurt her. They said they wouldn’t.”

She’s shaking, though. When Matt seizes her by the wrist, presses the tracker into her hand, she doesn’t scratch. “They’ve been visiting her,” he says. “Every night. They put a tracking chip up her nose like they would an animal, and they used it to punish her when she didn’t follow orders. Whatever they told you, at this point, I’m pretty sure that it was a lie.”

Skye stares at him. “They’re my family,” she says, very, very quietly.

“Sometimes family screws you over.”

She doesn’t flinch. Very slowly, she clenches her hand into a fist around the tracker. “I thought SHIELD agents were all about following rules. This seems a bit fast-and-loose with regulations.”

“I’ve always been more for the spirit than the letter of the law.” He lets her go, and steps away. “It’s off, for now. Don’t turn it on until you’re sure they’ve left Simmons alone. They’ll have to eventually, standard interrogation. Give her time to think.”

“But—”

“You want her safe?”

Skye _burns,_ and he thinks, _oh, that’s what it is, then._ Even if he hadn’t been what he is, Ward never stood a chance, sounds like. “Yes.”

“Then turn it on when you think we have a chance.” He hesitates. “Not gonna ask if you know how.”

“Good, because if you had I would have punched you in the face.” She shoves the tracker down the collar of her shirt, hiding it in her bra. “What are you gonna do until then?”

His satphone is technically only cleared for use with SHIELD. Any call he makes will automatically be recorded, and he could get cited for using it outside of regs. He doesn’t particularly care. “Call my partner back. Eventually.”

“Eventually?”

His batons press in close against his spine.

“I want to talk to Grant Ward first,” he says.


	3. iii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: blood, broken bones, a little body horror, fire, manipulation, gaslighting (Raiiiiinaaaaaa), murder, execution, bruising, mentions of guns, Ward's General Wardness, X-Files shenanigans.

Frost insists on coming back up with them.

“She’s my patient,” she says, when Trip tries to talk her down. “She’s my patient, she was taken on my watch, and the only reason this happened is because I let your goddamn partner talk me into letting these two FBI goons have a word with her. I fix my own mistakes, Detective. _Don’t_ argue with me.”

She’s pretty sure Emma Frost and Trip have some kind of history, judging by how fast Trip shuts up. That, or Trip has a healthy understanding of how human beings work, and that Dr. Emma Frost is not someone to mess around with. Darcy’s fairly sure even AD Hand would shut her mouth and snap to after being on the receiving end of that particular look.

They’re about an hour up the highway when her phone goes off. It’s a number she doesn’t recognize, but at least they’re still in range of most cell towers, so when she picks up, the connection doesn’t shatter into bits. “This is Lewis.”

“Lewis.” She almost doesn’t recognize the voice over the phone. It takes her a second. “It’s me. How far out are you?”

“Murdock?” She covers her other ear with one hand. “How the hell did you get reception out there?”

“Satphone,” he says. “Not technically supposed to be using it. How far out?”

“We’re on the way back now.” She looks at Trip, and he flashes three fingers at her. “Two and a half hours. What happened?”

“They took Simmons.”

“Yeah, _I_ know that, how do _you_ know that?”

“Had a visitor a few hours ago.”

Holy crap. “Raina?”

“Skye.”

“ _Skye_?” Darcy says, and Trip wrenches the wheel just enough to nearly swerve the car into another lane. “Christ, Trip, don’t kill us—”

“What about Skye?”

She flaps a hand at him, and covers her ear up again. “Did Ward see her?”

“Ward,” says Murdock shortly, “is unconscious, and he’s going to be for another hour at least.”

Darcy opens her mouth, and shuts it. “I’m assuming that was an accident.”

“No,” Murdock says. “I may have possibly engineered it.”

“What was an accident?” says Trip.

“Nothing.” She flaps her hand at him again. There’s something pulling hard at her mouth that feels very much like a smile. “So national security isn’t so much a thing right now.”

“ _National security_?” Frost says in the backseat, in a very high-pitched voice. 

“Not when we’re on a time limit.” Murdock curses under his breath. “Can you push it to two hours? I can knock him out again if I have to but I’d rather not. I might damage something.”

“I’m pushing it at two and a half, Murdock, there are only so many laws we can break right now.” Especially with a civilian in the car. “What did Skye say?”

“Not as much as she could have. What did you find there?”

“Simmons was abducted on camera, we have the footage. Oh, and lots of burned carpet. Which I think is a method of transportation, but I can’t be sure since all that’s left behind is ash.”

“Gordon,” says Murdock.

“I’m Lewis, Murdock, keep up.”

“No, a man named Gordon came to the house with Skye. That—he burned the grass at the back door when he left.”

Her heart gives a big thud in her chest. “Sunglasses?”

“Eyeless,” says Murdock. “Somehow. The glasses just hide it.”

“And you’d know this because—”

“Not over the phone.”

“Wow, okay.” She shuts her eyes for a moment. “We really _are_ flipping the bird to national security right now, aren’t we?”

“I’m not a matter of national security.”

“What the hell are you two _talking about_?” hisses Trip through gritted teeth, and Darcy bites the inside of her cheek. She switches her phone to her other ear.

“Two and a half hours, Murdock. That’s as fast as we can go without burning up the engine.”

“Fine.” He says something else, a little muffled. She’s pretty sure it’s not meant for her. “I’m going to try someone at SHIELD.”

“You think that’s the best idea?”

“I think if I don’t they’re gonna get suspicious as to why I haven’t asked what the hell they think they’re doing,” he says. There’s something there, in his voice, that she can’t quite parse out. Frustration, maybe. Coiling and quiet, like coals under ash. “Two and a half hours.”

“We’ll try to be faster,” she says, and hangs up. Trip’s hands are tight on the wheel, knuckles bulging a little. There’s sweat on his upper lip.

“What happened?”

“Skye showed up,” says Darcy. “She’s been with the people who took Simmons. She wants to help.”

Trip’s quiet for an instant. Then he swears, loud and sharp, echoing against the windshield. “ _Damn_ it.”

“I’m more interested in national security,” says Frost, still using that high, thin voice. It creeps like an icicle. “And that this is apparently related.”

“It was a joke,” says Darcy shortly. She can dwell on the fact that she now has an inside joke with Matt Murdock, SHIELD Liaison and Actual Real Life Spy, after all of this is over. Possibly immediately after dealing with the fact that _I just lied to Detective Triplett because I’m pretty sure my blind coworker knocked Grant Ward out with a heavy stick and that’s…not exactly legal._ Also: _what the hell do you think you’re doing, SHIELD Spook?_ “Skye showed up at the camp right after we drove off, apparently. She had some things to say.”

“About Simmons?”

“About a lot.” She folds her arms tight over her chest. “Trip, you need to tell me what you meant when you said Ward was complicated.”  

“That doesn’t have anything to do with this—”

“You don’t know that it doesn’t.”

“You don’t know that it _does_ ,” Trip snaps, and stares hard at the road. “He’s my partner. I’m not rolling over on him just because you came up from Washington and whacked the hornet’s nest.”

“Trip,” says Darcy. He doesn’t react. “Trip, what aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing.”

“Trip—”

“ _Nothing_ ,” he says again. “We trained under the same guy, John Garrett, we—I’ve known him for years, and he might be a bastard sometimes, but Grant Ward is a good cop, he’s—he’s a good cop, and he’s a good detective, and he’s a patriot, so whatever Skye said—”

“I have no idea what she said, but Skye has absolutely _no_ reason to lie right now.” She watches him. “Trip, I know you don’t want to hear this, I know you don’t want to listen, but we have to at least consider the possibility that something more is going on with Ward than we thought there was.”

“He didn’t kill those people, Lewis.”

“Probably not,” she says. “But I think it’s really interesting that that’s the first thing you jumped to.”

Trip drops into French. Or not quite French, but something close to it. _Creole_ , Darcy realizes, with a bolt of nostalgia. _Louisiana Creole._ She hasn’t heard it in so long that she can only pick one word out of ten, but there’s enough crudity in there to last her for a good six months. When it’s over, Trip fades into a furious kind of silence.

“Trip,” says Dr. Frost, very quietly.

“Skye asked me once if I knew anything about Ward’s family,” Trip says. His voice is almost hollow, but not quite. Like the echo after a bell’s been rung. “He never talked about his folks, but—but the way she asked made me think. So I looked up the name. His brother’s a politician, works out of DC, but about ten years ago there was—there was an article published. The family’s house nearly burned down. Ward was in military school at the time.”

Frost’s eyes jump from Trip to Darcy and back again, cold and sharp and very, very blue. She folds her arms over her stomach.

“And, y’know, I thought that was the end of it, but the way Skye asked about it that first time, it—it was still bugging me. So I went looking. Called a friend of mine out in DC, asked her to check into the old case file. Investigation came up flat, not enough evidence, but—but the main theory was that it was arson. And their top suspect was Ward. Which is _insane_ , because Ward wouldn’t burn his own house down. Like I said, he was in military school, he wouldn’t have been able to.”

“What was his alibi? The school?”

“He went AWOL that night,” says Trip. “According to the records. He told the interviewing officers that he’d snuck out to meet a girl and it was just bad timing. She backed him up, and there was no actual physical evidence, so they had to discount it and look for other suspects.”

“But they thought it was Ward,” says Darcy, and Trip punches the horn.

“It _couldn’t have been Ward._ ” His eyes are overbright. “Ward wouldn’t do that.”

“Okay, he wouldn’t.” She shakes her head. “That still doesn’t explain why you were so freaked out about Raina and what’s happened with Skye.”

Trip falls quiet again. In the back, Frost refolds her arms. “Tell her, Trip.”

“Tell me what?”

He opens his mouth, and then shuts it again.

“The first time Ward and Trip interviewed Dr. Simmons, I was there in the back of the room.” Frost knots her hands up under her cardigan. “When I took over managing from Dr. Xavier a few years ago I reached out to local law enforcement, said that if necessary we could take on persons of interest dealing with certain circumstances. If the local psych wards are full or if they require more delicate handling. So it wasn’t the first time I’ve watched you or Detective Ward interrogate someone, Trip, you know it wasn’t. And with Jemma Simmons, he was—” She looks up at the ceiling light, stares at it like she wants to set the roof of the car on fire. “He was showing some obsessive tendencies.”

“Ward’s always been focused.”

“Not to this degree,” says Frost. “He’s a driven personality, but there was a tone to his questions that made me uncomfortable. It’s why I requested that he go outside, that you finish the interview alone.”

“You said that two people might intimidate her.”

Frost shakes her head. “Ward was being aggressive, unpredictable. Quiet one minute, threatening the next.”

“Did he ask about Skye?”

“He asked if Dr. Simmons had ever met someone matching Skye’s description, showed her a photograph. She told him no, but she was lying, pretty obviously, she—she flinched when she saw Skye’s face. Ward was…abrupt with her.” 

“He was frustrated,” says Trip, but he doesn’t believe it. Darcy can see it in his face. “He wasn’t thinking straight.”

“That’s what I thought, or what I told myself, but an hour after the two of you left he came back, tried to get in to see Dr. Simmons again.” She presses her lips together. “When I told him no, he was upset.”

 _Upset, she says._ “Did he threaten you?” says Darcy. Trip doesn’t seem to be capable of speaking at all, anymore.

“Not in words.” Frost darts a look at the car window. “I’m certain that was his intention, but I’m not intimidated easily. When I asked him why he needed to speak to Dr. Simmons so badly, he gave me some crap story about new evidence turning up on one of the bodies. I know the medical examiner quite well, and when I called him after Ward left, Hank didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.”

Goddamn insularity. “Why didn’t you say this before?”

“Because the first time I spoke to you, it was with Ward,” snaps Dr. Frost. “And forgive me, Agent Lewis, but you didn’t make a much better show of yourself than he did, the way you interviewed Jemma Simmons.”

“Fair point,” Darcy says after a moment.

“I put Dr. Simmons in one of the carded rooms so I would be sure he couldn’t get in to see her without my letting him through the door.” Frost rubs at her eyes. “And the next time he showed up, it was with you and Agent Murdock and threats of arrest if I didn’t cooperate.”

 _Someone who demonstrates themselves to be psychologically unfit_ , Darcy thinks, _doesn’t generally wind up with the job._

“And Raina?” she says.

Frost shakes her head. “I don’t know who Raina is. Neither Jemma nor Ward ever mentioned her.”

“All I know about Raina is what I told you, girl,” says Trip. “Ward just said she was a UFO junkie and had some information for him about Skye. Thought it was bull, and he never mentioned it again. I don’t know who the hell she is. I never even saw her face, only—only the hood and the flower print dress.”

Frost shifts uneasily in the backseat. “Flower print?”

“That mean something to you?”

“Jemma—mentioned flower print, once. Right after she woke up. The woman in the flower dress.” Frost bites her lip. “I thought it was a hallucination.”

“Great,” says Darcy, and bites her thumbnail. “Fan-freaking-tastic.”

Silence, for a while.

“You never mentioned that Ward came back.” Trip’s eyes flick to the rear view mirror. Dr. Frost stares at the window, her arms still wrapped tight around herself. “You could have told me, Emma.”

“Would you have believed me?” says Dr. Frost.

Trip doesn’t answer. He does, however, step on the gas.

Murdock must have heard the car coming, because when they slam out of the truck and start up the little hill towards the camp he’s already standing in the door frame, arms crossed, waiting for them. He looks different, Darcy thinks. She’s not entirely sure how until she realizes that the cane is nowhere in sight. That and his lip is puffy, split along one side. It’s not particularly fair, she thinks, that Murdock can pull off a black eye and a split lip and still look pretty. “Ward’s not here,” he says, before Trip can say anything. “He’s out looking for Skye.”

“Wonderful,” says Dr. Frost. “More fodder for his complex.”

“What’s she doing here?” Murdock says to Darcy, and Darcy pushes her thumb into the scar on her palm.

“Her patient, her rules. What the hell happened to you?”

“Tripped,” he says again, and she’s pretty sure none of them actually believe him, but Trip and Dr. Frost, at least, let him get away with it this time. “Skye printed out some of the reports the scientists sent back to SHIELD, but I can’t read them.”

“I can,” says Trip grimly. “Dr. Frost, I’d appreciate it if you stayed in my sightline. There’s been enough going wrong the past few weeks.”

“Of course.” Frost eyes Murdock, turns back to Trip. “If you’ll let me, I can look at the reports. I might see some kind of pattern.”

“If it’ll keep you in one place then go right ahead.” Trip snaps to Darcy. “Lewis?”

“I’m good with it. I studied astrophysics, not biology, I don’t know a thing about what it takes to survey land.”

“ _Astrophysics_?” says Trip, but Darcy ignores him.

“Can you come with me for a second?” Murdock says, and snags her elbow with only a single fumble. “I need to talk to you about something.”

“Sure.”

Trip and Dr. Frost pass Murdock without a word, shifting so they can slip through the space between him and the door frame. Murdock waits until they’re out of sight, bickering a little, before he reaches out and takes the cane from the wall, unerring. “This way.”

“Do you actually need that?” Darcy asks, staring at the cane as it buzzes over the grass. “Or are you trying to keep Trip from getting too nervous?”

“It’s heavier than it looks like,” says Murdock, like this is an answer. He keeps his spine very straight, and when he lets out a breath, there’s an uncomfortable knot at the corner of his mouth. “What did Trip tell you?”

“That Ward’s a budding psychopath and apparently nobody noticed. What did SHIELD say?”

“Not here.”

The main laboratory is the building furthest from where they’ve parked the cars. It’s just a box, she thinks, maybe seven feet by thirteen, crammed full of equipment, but there’s a side that bulges where they built a makeshift storage room to keep the extra stuff they didn’t use every day. Some of it’s vanished, of course— _thanks, SHIELD_ —but it’s still bursting at the seams with all the crap. She thinks at first that he’s going to pull her inside, but instead he stops at the door, and tugs at his cane. It’s collapsible, she realizes. When it’s folded up, Murdock wraps both hands around the pieces, and holds on.

“So what’s the sitch, Wade?”

“SHIELD didn’t tell me anything,” he says. “I called a friend. Skye has a tracking signal she’s going to turn on the moment she thinks we’d be able to get in and grab Simmons without too much trouble, and when she does, Jess will let me know.”

“Jess?”

“Another agent in the SID. She’s on maternity leave right now.”

Darcy stops. “Your friend on _maternity leave_ will let us know when Skye activates the homing beacon?”

“Jess is creative,” says Murdock. “She’ll let us know as soon as it’s been turned on, and we can move. Until then, we just have the reports Skye printed out, and—well.”

He gestures at the lab like it holds all the answers.

“And you, y’know, _just happened_ to have a remotely activated homing beacon lying around?”

“You know how passports have chips inside them to track which airports you pass through? Same with SHIELD badges. There’s a chip inside each one, behind the shield.” He waves this off. “That’s not the point.”

“The point is Grant Ward isn’t wandering around looking for Skye, is he?”

His mouth twists. “Not exactly, no.”

There’s an odd kind of tension to his shoulders that makes her think of towels wound too tight. Also, his breathing is shallow, but she’s pretty sure that’s just from getting kicked in the ribs. “Question,” she says, slowly. “If I go in this building, will I find Detective Ward?”

“Possibly.”

 _Fabulous. This is the best day_. “Possibly,” she repeats, and looks at the door to the labs. “Not the safest place to put him, is it? With all the chemicals. And scalpels. And heavy, blunt objects with which he can beat in our skulls.”

It’s just light enough that she can see him blinking behind his glasses. His hands loosen a little. _Caught you there, SHIELD Spook,_ she thinks. She wonders if he thought she was going to scream. “He can’t get at anything right now.”

“Like that’s not ominous.”

“Believe it or not,” he says in a tight voice, “that wasn’t originally the plan.”

“You’re not saying that you wouldn’t have liked to beat the crap out of him for some of the stuff he’s pulled? Because I would.” She grits her teeth, and starts pacing. “You tried to talk to him about Skye, didn’t you?”

“Among other things.”

“And he attacked you, first, not the other way around?”

“Yes,” says Murdock, and goddammit. She believes him. She keeps believing him when she shouldn’t, and she’s kicking herself every minute, but she can’t seem to make herself stop. _Been alone too long, Darcy girl._ Snarking occasionally with Sharon Carter and sparring over corpses with Helen Cho isn’t the same as actual human interaction, not in the way that a partner makes you interact with someone. _Goddammit._ She pushes her glasses up into her forehead, and rubs at her eyes.

“Is it common SHIELD practice to whack your suspects in the head and then throw them in the time-out corner?”

“Not precisely, but the SID gets a lot of leeway.”

“And apparently commits a lot of felonies.”

He lifts one shoulder, and lets it fall again. “Technically. But I don’t exactly plan on getting caught.”

“This is not a time for snark, SHIELD Spook.” Murdock turns away from her, towards the gleam of the lake, and Darcy lets out a breath. “Is he conscious?”

Murdock tips his head, and listens for a moment. “Yes.”

“Jesus.” Her heart’s beating very fast, for some reason. “And he isn’t screaming for help…why?”

“There may be a gag,” says Murdock. “Can’t promise it.”

“A gag—you _tied him up_?”

“Cuffs wouldn’t hold him.”

The noise that cracks out of her is more like nails across a blackboard than anything, and the face Murdock makes when she does it is actually spectacular. “How the _hell—_ ”

“About an hour after I called you, he woke up. Crushed his own thumbs to get out of the restraints. Improvisation was necessary.” He pauses. “Hypothetically, improvisation was necessary.”

“Oh, hypothetically,” says Darcy acidly. “Are we talking _my grandmother was a purple alien from Neptune_ hypothetically or _Grant Ward broke your ribs when you tried to get him to explain himself_ hypothetically?”

“Who says I have broken ribs?”

“You can’t seem to take a full breath and you were walking like a robot. That says broken ribs to me.”

His eyebrows lift behind his round glasses. Murdock tucks his chin in towards his chest, and shifts his weight. “Broken ribs hypothetically.”

“ _Jesus Christ,_ ” she says again, and starts to pace. She keeps her arms wound tight over her stomach. “And you were calling _me_ an aggressive interrogator?”

“I asked politely the first time.”

“Says you!”

“You might want to lower your voice, he can hear you.”

“Great.” She’s fighting the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose. Scratch that. She’s not fighting the urge at all. The pinching thing? Happening. “And you’d know this the same way you’d know that he’s awake, and the same way you found the shotgun shell, and the bug in that desk drawer.”

“The shotgun shell was Rodan, the wilderness expert.” He resettles his hands against the folded cane, shoulders still twisting up. “He took a few potshots at Skye, and at Gordon, too. I could smell blood on him when he turned up at the campsite. They must have taken the gun away with them after killing the scientists.”

“You believe her?”

“She was telling the truth.”

“More shotgun shell magic?”

“Not exactly.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, will you just—how far can you hear, precisely?”

For once, Murdock doesn’t freeze. Instead, he smiles, honey-slow, like she just cracked a code. And she’s definitely gone too long without human interaction, because that, right there, is a _smile,_ and it’s making the hair on the back of her neck stand up. “Pretty far.”

Screw the smile. She’s going to beat him up with a baseball bat, and she’s going to enjoy it. “How far is pretty far?”

He considers that. “In the city, about a six block radius. Farther if I focus.”

 _Six blocks._ “Okay. Um. I’m assuming it’s not just hearing?”

“No.”

“Thought so,” she says, satisfied. “Extrasensory perception?”

“ESP?” Murdock wrinkles his nose. “No. More combinatory sensorial enhancement.”

“Minus sight.” All right, then. “Echolocation?”

“I don’t echolocate. I’m not a bat.”

“Of course you’re not. Bats aren’t blind.”

The smile gets bigger. “Precisely.”

“So let’s just call it steroid senses,” she says. “Scent, too? Is that how you tell if someone’s lying?”

“No, that’s heartbeat.”

“So, the whole thing about the water, was that—”  

“That lake,” he says, “is the vilest thing I’ve smelled in years.”

“That explains some things.” Darcy steals some air, and then frees it again. “Fine. Time to bite the bullet and chat with a sociopath.”

Murdock stills. “You go in there, your plausible deniability is shot to hell.”

“Come on, SHIELD Spook,” she says. “Where else are they gonna put me? The sub-basement? There’s only so deep in the earth I can go before I light the whole of the J. Edgar Hoover Building on fire with magma blowback.”

“I don’t know.” His voice gets all rocky. “There’s always federal prison.”

“Hey,” says Darcy, “according to you, this was self-defense. Besides, I figure if your sugar daddies sent you here to spy on me, we might as well give them a show.”

Murdock seizes her elbow again. This time, though, he doesn’t say anything. He turns his head towards her and just kind of…stands there. Like he’s looking at her, even though she knows he can’t be. The clouds start to spit rain, thready drops like static in an old film reel.

“What,” says Darcy, very quietly. “Different than what you expected?”

If she wasn’t already absolutely sure he wasn’t telekinetic, she’d wonder, right now. The air around him seems to _buzz_ , for a second; he’s so damn focused that it’s electrifying. Then, slowly, he lets her go. Darcy doesn’t step back.

“A little,” he says, just as quietly. 

They stand there in silence for a bit.

“I can help you,” he says, still in that soft voice. “You just have to let me.”

 _And step away._ She looks down at the grass, turns towards the door of the storage room. “You want to help, tell me everything Skye told you. I don’t want to go in there and have him trip me up.”

His focus weighs like a sandbag on the back of her neck.

.

.

.

Ward, she thinks, is _definitely_ not happy. He looks like he’s had the crap kicked out of him, though, with the remnants of a bloody nose caking over the strip of cloth that’s been stuffed in his mouth. His thumbs look like broken twigs, and the hole in the back of his hand is exactly the same circumference as the puncture wound on Rodan’s throat. _Bees and flowers._ There’s one murderer, at least. Who knows about the electric shock crap.

 _Raina killed Rodan_. And, presumably, if not Skye, then someone else, some other member of the commune, had killed the other scientists. With lightning. (In spite of herself, her palms get sweaty, because _electrokinesis, are you kidding me, is it possible, holy crap, electrokinesis and teleportation and whatever the hell else, oh my god, Lewis, you were right, you were right._ But then she takes a steadying breath, because getting all excited with Ward in the room isn’t going to help anyone.) Raina killed Rodan, smuggled the footage of Jemma Simmons to Ward, betrayed him—what for? What would be the purpose of that? 

Anyway. Ward doesn’t say anything. In a lot of ways she doesn’t expect him to. He’s tied up, he’s gagged, he’s deranged if Dr. Frost is right, and if Skye was telling the truth then there’s some implications of sexual violence here, or an attempt, anyway. She’s not particularly inclined to be all that disturbed about this. (Which is disturbing Murdock in its own way, she’s pretty sure, but that’s something else entirely.)

When they come back from the outlying storage unit, Trip and Frost have gathered in the dusty lounge, papers scattered everywhere. “You’re gonna want to take a look at this,” Trip says, “both of you,” and then stops and stares at Murdock for a little longer than is necessary. “Am I not supposed to say that?”

“I don’t care,” says Murdock, shortly.

“Right.” Trip folds back one of the stapled pages. “These mission reports are full of some weirdass names, that’s all I have to say. There are a lot of references to experiments and data that SHIELD must have taken, or—y’know, whoever else has been out here, but look at this.” He clears his throat. “I’m not a biochemist, I don’t know what half these graphs and words mean, but some of this looks like topographical charts. And maps.”

“Of the lake?”

“And of the woods. They were trekking around everywhere out here, apparently, looking for something that they keep calling _the Obelisk_. I don’t know if that’s some kind of weird code name or what, but it’s been referenced a few times in the summaries of these reports.” He flicks through another page. “Dr. Simmons calls it an 0-8-4, I don’t know what that means. Which, by the way, none of this was ever referenced in any of the other files we looked at yesterday.”

“SHIELD,” says Darcy. “Go on.”

“Simmons claims that the toxicity of the lake is some evidence that the thing is buried out here somewhere, but other than that, no dice. They came out here wanting to find it.”

 _Spelunking_ , Darcy thinks. _Geiger counters and hazmat suits._ “Murdock,” says Darcy, because next to her Murdock’s gone all shivery still. “What’s an 0-8-4?”

Trip looks from Darcy to Murdock and back again. “Thought you two were FBI.”

“I am,” says Darcy. “He’s not.”

“You’re _SHIELD_?” says Frost. “Christ.”

“Murdock,” says Darcy again. “Some explanation?”

“I don’t know what 0-8-4s are, I’ve never investigated one, they’re—it’s a different division. The closest I’ve been able to gather is that they’re close to WMDs.” He rubs a hand over his jaw. “If there’s one out here toxifying the water in Medicine Lake then that would explain why SHIELD was out here investigating it.”

“What kind of toxification are we talking about here, though?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” says Frost. “My specialty is in human biology, not water.  The readings on this, though—chemically, there’s definitely been some modification to the water in Medicine Lake. I can’t say exactly what’s been added, but according to the charts the—the chemical compounds that make the lake up have been altered at the base. All I can tell you is that whatever it is, it’s not carbon-based. Simmons gave it a new name, she calls it _astricide._ ”

“Astra.” Darcy peeks at Murdock. “That means _stars_ in Latin, doesn’t it?”

Murdock actually wrinkles his nose at her.

“It does,” says Frost, shortly. “Though that’s patently ridiculous.” 

“A lot of this makes no sense,” Darcy says, shortly. “Five people are still dead. And Jemma Simmons is still missing. If Raina’s the one who killed Rodan—”

“ _What_ ,” says Trip, and there’s a slight detour while Darcy goes over what little they’ve managed to put together.

“If Raina killed Rodan,” Darcy says again, while Trip’s mouth thins out to infinitesimal, “that still begs the question as to how his bones blew up from the inside. _And_ how lightning struck from a clear sky to kill the other four scientists.”

“And where Jemma Simmons has gone,” says Frost.

“Well, for that, we need to wait,” says Murdock with a sigh. He lets go of her arm. “Skye will set off the beacon when she gets the chance.”

“What about Ward?” says Trip.  “We have to wait until he gets back.”

“We might not have a choice.” 

Trip scowls, but he accepts that. Thankfully. “So what do we do, sit around and wait? I’m not good at that.”

“If Skye’s right and the people who took Jemma Simmons did it because she has some kind of compromising video file, then it has to be somewhere.” Darcy shrugs. “I know we’ve already been through this place top to bottom, but there’s no harm in ripping it apart all over again. Dr. Frost, did Dr. Simmons mention anything about that in her—her hallucinations?”

“Video footage?” Dr. Frost shakes her head. “Though if she’s as lucid as you claim she was there’s no reason why she should have. Especially if that was what they were threatening her over.”

“I still want to know what the hell is in that file that’s worth killing over.”

“You and me both, girl,” says Trip, and stands. “I’ll start in the residential wing.”

“We’ll take the main lab,” says Darcy. “Dr. Frost, you want to go with Trip, just in case? We keep in touch through the walkies. If they’re willing to grab Simmons, they might be willing to take any of us, and the state troopers were scared off this place somehow. I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried something before the night is up.”

They all look at each other. Well, aside from Murdock, who’s turned his head towards the wall. Still, the sentiment’s the same.

“I’d keep your gun handy,” Darcy says to Trip, and loops her arm through Murdock’s again. “Just in case.”

“That was the plan.”

“Okay.” Darcy looks at Trip, and then at Murdock. “Reconvene in two hours?”

“Roger roger,” says Trip, and makes for the residential wing.

Of course, when scientists squirrel things away, they _really_ squirrel things away. Darcy and Murdock shred every room in the main lab, including the storage room (working around a red-eyed, bloody, furious Ward, who ignores them with great aplomb), and there’s nothing, no hint of a USB stick, no CD taped anywhere it shouldn’t be. If it’s in the cloud, Darcy thinks, they’re screwed, because that would involve hacking beyond her limited abilities. She rubs at the scar on her hand about an hour into it, and sits on one of the lab tables, shoving at a microscope. “So what’s the plan, anyway?”

“The plan?”

“If we can’t find the video footage before they do.”

Murdock hums. “I still want to know who _they_ are.”

“Isn’t that obvious?” Darcy ticks it off on her fingers. “We have a man with no eyes who, in your own words, _rips_ through air to get places he should have no business being able to get into. And then there’s Raina, with the holes she leaves in people—”

“That could be a hatpin.”

“Ward was stabbed through the hand when he slapped her across the face, I’m thinking she doesn’t generally keep hatpins around there.”

Murdock grunts, and makes a triumphant noise when the pick he’d fashioned out of a few paperclips manages to get through the lock on one of the file drawers. “Jury’s out.”

“ _Astricide,_ Murdock. Simmons named whatever’s affecting the lake after stars. She’s a scientist; she’d know what _astra_ means. I’m pretty sure she was trying to call this stuff, whatever it is, _starkiller_. Which aside from being a great _Star Wars_ reference is also, y’know, kind of a clue as to what she thought it was.”

“And like I said before,” says Murdock. “Odd things doesn’t necessarily mean an alien invasion.”

“I never once said invasion.” Darcy watches his back for a moment. “I think they’re hybrids.”

“Hybrids with what?”

She points at the roof.

He drags the files out of the drawer, sets them on the table, and feels around inside before slamming the drawer shut again. “That,” he says, “is completely without basis in fact.”

She shrugs. “It would explain why someone wants it buried, if the US government has been conducting experiments with combining human and alien DNA.”

“SHIELD doesn’t swear to any one government, I told you that.”

“No, but even if they didn’t run the project in the first place—and there have been loads of projects like that, Murdock, _loads_ of different people have tried to combine human and alien DNA, I’ve just never heard of anyone succeeding—”

Murdock grumbles something at the cabinet.

“—then SHIELD makes its lifeblood out of hiding information like this from the public. They’d shut it down even if they had nothing to do with it just because they don’t want anyone else to know.” She ticks it off on her fingers. “We have a commune living in the middle of the woods near a lake that’s been poisoned with something called the Obelisk, which SHIELD was investigating. Five dead people, one missing genius, and SHIELD does nothing. State police submits the case to the FBI, the FBI buries it in the X-Files. The only reason we know anything about this is because a black hat hacker who came out here looking for answers about her family—”

“Also supposition.”

“Can you think of anything that an orphan with mystery parents would be searching for in a commune full of people with superpowers? Because I can’t. Besides, you’re the one who said she made the air vibrate when you pissed her off.”

Murdock presses his lips together. “Point.”

“Add in Grant Ward,” she says, dropping her voice, “who works for people who are, apparently, scarier than the FBI if Raina was so unimpressed by us—”

“There are a lot of things scarier than the FBI.”

“Tell that to the communists during the Red Scare. And all of that bundled up in one file and shoved under my door by someone who, I have to say, _doesn’t_ show up on any of the surveillance feed that I’ve managed to hack into.”

Murdock stops. “You didn’t tell me that before.”

“I didn’t see any reason to.” She eyes him. “You put all the pieces together, Murdock, none of it adds up into anything other than one huge conspiracy.”

He puts the paper clip in his teeth, pulls the second drawer open. “And then there’s the fact that Simmons more than likely has the exact same implant as Scott Lang did, in Orlando, Florida. Which is the exact opposite end of the continent.”

“You think this is the same group?”

He shrugs. “Maybe. Though how they came out here without anyone noticing all the people they’re _electrocuting_ is the question.”

“You said yourself they seem to have the ability to teleport.”

Murdock’s mouth goes sour. “Only one of them.”

“So Gordon carried a lot of luggage.” He snorts, and Darcy swallows back whatever other snark she could add. “I don’t know. It’s worth looking into once we find Simmons.”

“If we find Simmons.”

“Don’t be a Debbie Downer, SHIELD Spook.”

His lips twitch again. _Quit not being a douchey robot, it’s not helpful._ He turns, slowly. “So,” he says. “They move from Florida to Washington State after Scott Lang dies. SHIELD comes out to investigate the effects that the Obelisk, whatever it is, is having on the land around it. The scientists disturb the commune, or, rather, Skye links the commune and the scientists by visiting both, and the scientists are killed. Simmons is saved because of her connection with Skye, who now lives with this commune, and has some degree of power within the group if the way she seems to be able to influence the other members is any indication. Ward comes out looking for her, either on behalf of his overlords, whoever they are, or just for himself, and he gets tricked by Raina, who, presumably, is protecting Skye. What deal did she make with him?”

“Worth asking if we run into her, considering Ward’s zipped his lip,” says Darcy. She searches his face. “No cries of skepticism?”

“I’m working with the evidence we have. Gordon’s displayed some kind of special ability. Whatever it came from, it exists, that’s undeniable.” He shrugs. “So Simmons takes some video footage of something the commune would kill to keep secret. Presumably their abilities, since they killed Scott Lang in Florida for it. They come up here, the scientists die—” 

“They’re probably going to wind up moving again,” says Darcy, and Murdock nods. “They’ll kill Simmons once they find her video footage, and they’ll leave again. They’ll run.”

“And they might kill us too,” says Murdock, mildly. “Considering we’re out here poking our noses into their business.”

“You don’t have to sound so pleased about it.” 

“Pleased?” says Murdock. “This is me rattled.”

“Congrats on the poker face, then.”

Murdock blows out air. “There’s almost no tangible evidence for any of this.” 

“Yeah, but it all _fits_.”

“Doesn’t mean we can prove it.”

Darcy shuts her folder. “But it _works_. Skye came out here looking for these people, and she found them, and it set off a chain of events that brought _us_ here. I mean, think about it, Murdock. Is it impossible?”

“No.” He rubs at his eyes. “It’s not.”

“You might want to think about what you’re saying there, Super Spy. You’re the one who has to write a report about it. Considering who brought you into the Bureau.”

Murdock opens his mouth, and shuts it. “Right,” he says, after a moment. “Right.”

Silence again.

“You really don’t think I’m crazy,” Darcy says.

Murdock blinks at her, slowly. “If I was going to think you were crazy,” he says, “it probably would have been back at the hospital.”

She can’t help it. Darcy snorts, and rubs a hand over her mouth. Murdock’s lips curve up again, and it’s shy, this smile, like he’s not quite sure she’ll accept it. She pulls a few strands of hair over her shoulder, starts to braid.

“There’s something I haven’t mentioned,” he says, after a moment. “About why I was hired.”

Ice bathes her from top to toe. “Really.”

“I meant it when I said that AD Hand wanted me to assist you,” he says. “She—she called me into her office, before I met with Gonzalez. Privately, said I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. She didn’t say it in so many words, but—whatever it is you’re working on, Lewis, whatever your endgame is in going into the X-Files, you’re scaring people. Big people, big fish, higher up the food chain.”

Darcy goes very still.

“She called Coulson just to make sure someone was sent out from SHIELD because she didn’t think anyone in the FBI was trustworthy.” He shakes his head. “You’re barking up the right trees, Lewis. Whatever you’re looking for, they’re damn scared you’ll find it. And I don’t know what it is, but—but I’m pretty sure she called me in just to make sure you stayed alive until you figured it out.”

Her throat feels very dry. “You didn’t mention this before.”

“Because Hand asked me not to.”

And this, she thinks: this should be what cements him as an enemy. Somehow, it’s doing the exact opposite. Darcy hooks her hair behind her ears. “Didn’t know Hand cared that much.”

“I don’t know if it’s a matter of caring. She might just be trying to figure out who’s peeing in her section of the bureaucratic pool.” He hesitates. “I should have told you before. On the plane. I’m sorry.”

Darcy curls her hands up around the edge of the table. “It’s not a thing.”

“What?”

“What I’m looking for. It’s not a thing. Or it is a thing, but it’s—” Her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth. “It’s an answer, really. To a question, But there’s also—I’m looking for someone.”

Murdock rocks away from the filing cabinet, drops his hands to his sides. He wets his lips.

“Who?” he says.

 _Maybe,_ her stupid brain whispers, _maybe he’s not a liar, maybe he means it,_ but she knows better than to trust SHIELD, even if he’s broken code for her and even if he’s told her the truth and even if he hasn’t called her crazy yet, she knows better, she _knows_ better than this, but her stupid traitor mouth is already opening, and she can feel it in her throat, the name, the grief—

The satphone goes off. For a second, it doesn’t register—not with either of them, she thinks, just judging from how Murdock freezes, turns his face to the thing like it’s a bomb. Then he answers. “Murdock.”

Darcy slides off the table, and waits. She swallows it back down, the truth. _For someone who spends all her time looking for the truth,_ she thinks, _you’re doing a terrible job at telling it._

Yeah, well…whatever, self.

“Yeah, I have the coordinates.” He turns a little. “Thank, Jess.”

“How far off is it?” Darcy says, before he’s even put the phone all the way down.

“A few miles.” His jaw sets. “There aren’t any roads out here. We’re going to have to walk.”

“Let’s hope Jemma Simmons is still alive when we get there,” says Darcy. 

.

.

.

Dr. Frost comes along. It’s not as though they can leave her at the camp to get slaughtered, Matt reasons. Trip insists on coming, and if Trip comes then Dr. Frost comes. Ward’s the problem, all told. If they die, then Ward’s…well. Ward’s kind of screwed. “So,” Matt says, while the others go to get their things ready for the trek. He crouches in front of Ward’s chair. “We’re gonna go find your girl.”

Ward turns his head, and stares at him, unblinking.

“I’m going to knock you out,” Matt says. “And then I’m going to untie you. We should be back before you wake up. If we’re not, the state troopers should come back out here in a couple of days to look for us. Besides, it’s not as if I want you to die.”

Ward scoffs behind the gag.

“I wouldn’t suggest running,” Matt says. “You’re safer in here than you are out there. The people out in those woods? Raina will have gone back to them by now. She doesn’t strike me as the type to forgive a hit like that.”

He doesn’t blink. He just stares.

“Last chance to tell me who you’re working for.” Matt claps his hands to his knees, and stands. “What do you think, do you think they’re the types to leave you to die out here, or no?”

Another scoff from behind the gag. Ward looks hard at the wall.

“Your funeral.” He tips his head. “But if I were you, I’d stay inside. Somehow I don’t think you’re immune to lightning, no matter where it comes from.”

Ward rolls his eyes, and turns his head away. Matt isn’t gentle when he snags the syringe (he’d found tranquilizer in the geneticist’s things, probably for animal testing) and jabs it into the meat of Ward’s arm. Hopefully, he thinks, it should be enough to keep him quiet until they get back.

If they get back.

The woods are dark, and the rain has stopped, so they clump together in a small, silent band, traipsing after Trip. The coordinates are somewhere to the north and east of them, four miles out approximately, and the sun’s been set for more than an hour by the time they finally start getting close.

(—pine sap and rain and rotting leaves and the murmur of soft voices, Chinese and English and Xhosa and Spanish and Hindi, and where have they all come from? All over the world, from the sound of it, and there’s something there, in that, but he’s not entirely sure—)

Half a mile off, Matt (he’s been holding on to Lewis’s arm the whole time, letting her lead, tripping over tree roots on occasion just to make sure, and she keeps digging her nails into his wrist like she’s laughing when he does it) clears his throat, and says, “Maybe we should turn the light off. If we’re close enough.”

Trip coughs. “Moon’s bright enough.”

“Wouldn’t know,” says Matt, and Dr. Frost laughs. She sounds exhausted, but she laughs, and it’s maybe the first time she’s made such a human sound.

“That’s some dark humor.”

“Hah,” says Lewis.

“Turning the light out,” says Trip, and there’s a flick of a switch. The flashlight cools. Matt digs his fingers into Lewis’s elbow, and she pinches at his wrist again.

“How are we doing this?” she says.

“Like we said,” Trip says. “Talk to Skye.”

“Skye might not be able to come out and find us,” says Lewis. “We’re going to have to look alone.”

Silence for a second.

“I take Murdock west,” Lewis says. “You take Frost and go east. We circle around. Anything happens, see anything weird, use the walkie.”

“You’ll probably hear the screaming first, as an FYI,” says Trip, and he’s smiling. “Good luck.”

“You too, Trip,” says Darcy. She knocks him once in the shoulder, and then tugs Matt off. Trip and Dr. Frost vanish into the bushes, creeping like cats, but Matt still waits until they’re a few minutes out before he lets Lewis go, and crouches behind a log.

“Can you tell where they are?”

“Let me listen.”

“Mm.” Lewis squats down next to him. There are leaves in her hair, and he’s really not certain that she’s noticed. “Shutting up.”

 _Breathe._ In and out and in again, a rhythm of seven and eleven. _C’mon, Matty. Let it in._ In and out, and on the third breath in, he _listens_. It’s chaos. The forest isn’t silent, at night, it’s a cacophony, it’s birds and foxes and rabbits asleep in burrows, it’s owls and raindrops on leaves and the flutter of moth’s wings and beyond that it’s people, and they smell of sweat and earth and shampoo and body wash and hot water, there’s hot water here, showers, somehow, he’s not sure how they’ve managed it, sturdy buildings and a small village out here in the middle of nowhere, and he counts thirty, forty, roughly forty heartbeats, some small and thready like children’s hearts are, voices, everywhere, voices he doesn’t know, words he can’t recognize, languages and whispers, lightning and grease and cooking oil and chili, and—

“— _be here soon_ —”

“— _sure that this is—_ “

“— _can’t do this_ —”

“— _crazy, Skye_ —”

“Murdock,” says a voice, and then there’s a hand to his shoulder. “ _Matt._ ”

He snaps out of it. Matt snags wildly at the nearest thing, and it’s the log at his back, the earth pressing up into the treads of his boots, it’s Lewis and honey and salt from sunflower seeds, and he heaves two great breaths before reining it all back in. “Why’d you bring me back?”

“You were shaking.” There’s a thread of real fear in her voice. “It—I don’t know, it was weird. Are you okay?”

“Fine.” His hands are still trembling, a little. He hasn’t intentionally dived so deep in years, and _goddamn_ , his balance is shot. “Can you see any of the camp?”

“Not unless I climb. I’m not a giant.”

“There’s a smaller building behind what I think is the dining hall, the big one with the benches in front—they’re holding Simmons there. Skye’s with her, I think—I think they threw her in too.” He pinches at the bridge of his nose. “Raina’s expecting us. She’s waiting in front of the door with Gordon.”

“What?” She peers over the top of the log. “How?”

“I don’t know, she just is.”

“Damn it.” Lewis hits the button on the walkie. “Trip, watch it, apparently we’re expected.”

“Why am I not surprised,” Trip says, crackling through static, and then the walkie shuts off again.

“If we keep to the trees, we can sneak right up to the back of that building. Lure Raina and Gordon out of range, knock them out.” Lewis sucks her teeth. “If we’re lucky we might actually be able to get Simmons and Skye out of the village without anyone the wiser.”

“Go,” says Raina, echoing in his ears, and then there’s a crack in the air. Gordon. Matt shuts his eyes, jerks his head from side to side. It’s an _awful_ thing, to hear, to sense, the air being torn apart and sealed back up again with whatever metaphysical nonsense Gordon’s pulling out of his magician’s hat. In the next moment, a dozen yards away, the air tears again—“Deal with it,” Gordon says, “for all of us”—and someone else is left behind. 

_Crap._

It’s a young man, quiet, scared. His heart’s beating like a bird’s wings in his ribs. “Lewis,” says Matt, almost inaudibly. “Behind you. To your left.”

Lewis goes very still, and then stands, catching his hands and heaving him to his feet. “Right,” she says. Her breathing’s steady. “Hey, there,” she says, pitching her voice, low and careful. “We’re just here for Dr. Simmons, Lincoln.”

 _Lincoln._ Lincoln Campbell. He smells of Indian spice and static, and when he swallows, his hands are trembling. “You need to leave,” he says. “I can’t—you need to _leave._ ”

“All we want is Dr. Simmons,” Lewis says again. “She’s not going to do anything to any of you. If you give us Dr. Simmons, we can go, and you won’t have to move again.”

“ _Leave,_ ” says Lincoln again. He’s not much younger than either Matt or Lewis, middle twenties, but when he talks his voice cracks as if he’s just hit puberty. “Get the hell out of here. You’re trespassing.”

“This land is owned by the federal government.” Lewis drops a hand to her hip, and unclips the gun from its holster. “Technically speaking.”

The kid catches his breath. “I don’t want to kill you. You _have to go._ ”

“I don’t think you’re a bad kid, Lincoln,” says Lewis. “You helped Skye. We just want to make sure Dr. Simmons can go back home, that’s _all._ There doesn’t have to be a fight.”

His heart skips. Lincoln closes his hands into fists. “You’re not allowed here. You need to go, now.”

“I’m gonna ask one more time, Lincoln. I don’t want to have to do anything more.” Lewis shifts her weight. “Where’s Dr. Simmons?”

The air crackles with ozone. Matt parts his lips, lets the scents settle against his tongue. Ozone and fear-sweat and the sear of scorching hair, and the boy is breathing like he’s about to scream, and the air, Christ, the _air_ —

He doesn’t think. He seizes the back of Lewis’s jacket, and yanks her down to the ground, dropping fast. In the same moment, the air—it _shatters._ It’s the only way he can think to put it. The air shatters, his hair stands on end, and the tree they’d been standing in front of is on fire. Lewis lets out a little noise, not a scream but a yelp. Something cracks, like static in a fleece blanket but easily six times as loud, and then the air bursts again. This time it’s Lewis who grabs him by the back of the shirt. “C’mon,” she says, “c’mon, this way,” and Lincoln is panting and shaking when she drags Matt through the smoke and deeper into the woods. 

They’re about fifty yards out and halfway to snapping an ankle when Lewis punches the air hard, and lets out a whoop like a banshee. A few birds startle out of the branches of a nearby pine tree. “Did you _see_ that? Did you—oh my god, _electrokinesis_ , there’s never been a case on public record of genuine electrokinesis and that kid just went like—” She makes a crackling noise in her throat like a twelve-year-old, and punches the air again. “I need to talk to him, if I could get that on film—”

“I’m sure he’s gonna want to pose for your home videos,” Matt says, and seizes her by the back of the collar before she swings herself into a tree. Lewis doesn’t notice. “Quiet _down_.”

“Hybrids,” she says, in a whisper that echoes. “Murdock, _alien-human hybrids._ Alien DNA mixed up with that of _Homo sapiens._ And apparently it works, and has some pretty—some pretty powerful side effects, holy crap, I don’t think he was even singed—”

“Can we talk about this later?”

“If the whole camp can do things like that then we’re probably in trouble.” The glee’s fading again, even if she can’t seem to stop beaming at the nearest stump. “That explains how the scientists were struck by lightning from a clear sky, at least—”

“Which means that kid you’re so excited about is a murderer, Lewis, he killed four people, and Raina killed the fifth, and Skye—” _knew it,_ he thinks. Skye had known, and protected him. _Damn it all._ “They know we’re here now.”

“What do you think, you think they can all do that?”

“Raina didn’t seem to—” _I can’t believe I’m saying this._ “—to be able to shoot lightning.”

“So, what, individualized.” She wipes her sweaty hands on her pants. “We could have a whole army on our hands and we’re heading in to break out one woman. As regular human meatsacks.” She glances at him. “Well, you’re a bit of an exception. Can you shoot lightning out of your hands?”

“No.”

“Figures.” 

Gordon flashes again, in and out of reality, and there’s another one left behind, this time in the trees. Matt curses under his breath. “Keep your head down,” he says, and when Lewis obeys—and she _does_ , which shouldn’t surprise him as much as it does, she drops without a word—Matt snags one of his batons from the small of his back, flips it twice in one hand, and throws it as hard as he can up between the branches. It rebounds, and catches the second one—a woman, she smells like calla lilies—right in the back of the head. She drops, and lands in a bush.

Lewis looks up at him with big eyes.

“So,” she says, a little breathless. “When were you gonna tell me about _that_ trick?”

“Probably now,” Matt says, and snags his baton out of the bush.

The walkie chirps. “Lewis, you there?”

Lewis hasn’t looked away from him yet. It should, he thinks, be more unsettling than it is. “Something wrong, Trip?”

“Just wondering why you had to kick the hornet’s nest,” says Trip, in a tight voice. “Things are getting kind of interesting over here.”

“Everything okay?”

“We’re gonna start circling back around to you if we can, I don’t like it over here. There’s some kind of cave system, lots of guards in front of it. Kinda want to see what they're guarding, but they're pissed as hell right now, and I don't wanna tempt fate.”

“Keep your eyes on the trees, someone’s getting a little overheated out here,” says Lewis. She turns off the walkie.

"Overheated?"

"You'd rather I say scorching?" She cocks an eyebrow. “Lead the way, Indiana.”

The camp is in chaos. One of Lincoln’s lightning bolts had gone rogue, and set a building on fire. There are people shouting, screaming. A distraction, if nothing else. Gordon’s ripping everywhere, looking for them, probably, and every time he tears the air it feels like someone just jammed a stonecutting tool into the side of Matt’s head. Lewis notices the third time, and catches him when he staggers. “What—”

“Gordon’s moving.”

“Great. Where are Trip and Frost?”

“About five hundred meters behind.” And staying quiet, thank God. “This way,” Matt says. “Around the back—”

—the air, tearing— 

“There you are,” says Gordon, and then there’s a fist coming at his face. Matt peels off from Lewis, and _hell_ , Gordon’s fast, as fast as Stick, almost, and every time the air cracks apart it makes his head swim. Lewis wavers, her gun in her hands, on the balls of her feet.

“ _Go_ ,” Matt says, in the moment before Gordon snaps back into reality again, and she bolts. _Get them out of here._

“You people a pain in the ass,” Gordon says, and he can’t help it. Matt laughs. Trip and Frost are closing in fast. _Finish this,_ he thinks. _Before they see._

“Now, that I’ve been told before.”

He lands a hit on the bullet wound in Gordon’s shoulder before the man can rip away.

.

.

.

Considering the chaos of the camp, the area around where Jemma Simmons is being held is exceptionally quiet.

Darcy comes in from the back. Gordon’s tangled up with Murdock—well, for a little bit, anyway, and she really, really hopes that Murdock can handle that, even with his _completely unexpected baton maneuvers_ , what the hell, you _tell people_ that stuff—but there’s still Raina to worry about, Raina and whoever else she might have dragged around to help keep an eye on Simmons and Skye. _Time limit ahoy_ , and it’s a hostage situation and she really, really shouldn’t be doing this, the last time she was in a hostage situation _she_ was the hostage and that was phenomenally unpleasant for all involved, but—damn. _Not like there’s any other choice._

The little storage building—and isn’t this ironic, that Grant Ward and Skye are both trapped in storage units on different sides of an interspecies divide—has only one door, from what she can tell, but there’s a tiny-ass window in the back with bars over it, and that’s what Darcy aims for. She can hear whispering, just a bit, and when she jams her foot into one of the dips in the brick and heaves herself up to peer through the gap, there are two long-haired figures sitting inside, dark and pale. She hisses. “ _Hey_.”

“ _You_ ,” says Simmons, and bolts up off her chair for the window. They’re unbound, which, thank God. Not like she couldn’t have dealt with ropes, but still. And as soon as she steps into the shaft of light from the window— _Christ._ There’s blood caked over her nose and mouth. “Agent Lewis—”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Darcy says. “It could set off the chip, don’t talk to me. Okay? Don’t.”

“I won’t let them shackle my bloody mouth shut,” Simmons snaps, and whoa, okay. “They’ve done that for long e-bloody-nough.”

Well. That’s that, then.

“Are you the only one who came?” The second one is the dark-haired, sharp-eyed girl from Ward’s files. Mary Sue Poots. Skye. There’s a bruise on the side of her head, which…kind of explains the delay, to be honest. She has a look on her face like she wants to kick the world in the teeth. “You took your damn time.”

“Skye, I wouldn’t aggravate the woman who’s come all this way to save our skins.”

“I come in peace and sass,” says Darcy, “and screw you, Skye, we don’t all have a teleporting taxi service.”

Skye snorts.

“What’s with the shiner?”

“I pissed off Raina,” says Skye. She comes to stand by Simmons, and their hands link as if magnetized. “Tried to stop her from pulling off her damn coup and Gordon hit me. What’s your plan?”

“I’m not alone, but things are going kind of nuts out here, so I don’t think we have all that much time.”

“Yeah, no kidding.” Her pupils are blown wide. She’s frightened, Darcy thinks. “Couldn’t you people have come in any quieter?”

“Hey, we didn’t fire the first shot, okay? We had a plan. It was a plan that emphasized quiet. Lincoln botched it.”

Skye shuts her eyes like she’s been kicked. “ _Damn_ it.”

“Which doesn’t mean he’s going to get away,” says Darcy, “but for right now I’m more focused on getting you two out of here, okay? Gimme two minutes.”

“Be careful,” says Jemma. “If Raina—”

“I can deal with Raina. So long as she doesn’t spit fire.”

Darcy drops back down to earth before either of them can say a word. Such pretty names, she thinks, for such dangerous women. Skye. Raina. She refolds her hand around the butt of her gun. And three, two, one—

“Please,” says a voice, a spilled honey voice, and Darcy has her gun up in an instant. Raina already has her hands in the air. Her face is in shadow, but God, there it is, the flower print dress beneath the half-open jacket. The hood is pulled so far forward over her head that all Darcy can see is her mouth. For a second, she thinks of _Bone,_ and the Hooded One, Briar Harvestar. _Not a time for comic books, Lewis._ “There’s no need for the gun.”

“Sure.”

“You were meant to come here,” says Raina. “I’m not about to get you killed now. Not before we’ve had a chance to talk.”

Her heart skips a beat. Out of the corner of her eye, there’s a pop, a flash. Gordon flaring in and out of existence.

“Meant,” Darcy says, very slowly. “For what, the lobster?”

“You’re meant for a lot of things.” Raina tips her head. “So’s your partner, Agent Lewis. The pair of you have a great deal of work to do.”

“That’s cute, but I’ll skip the theatrics.” Darcy thumbs off the safety. “If you know who I am, you know why I’m here. Back away from the door.”

“Can’t do that, Darcy.” Raina shakes her head. “There has to be a sacrifice. All for the greater good, you see. What’s one missing scientist?”

“A lot.” Her voice breaks. _Damn it._ “Back away from the door. Whatever little game you’ve been playing, with Simmons and Skye and Grant Ward, it’s over. Move.”

“With _Ward_ ,” Raina says, and scoffs. “Ward was nothing more than a means to an end. You know what we are, Darcy, better than your partner does. Better than half of _us_ do.”

“Move away from the door,” Darcy says. “Don’t make me shoot you, Raina.”

“ _Look at me_ ,” Raina says, and sweeps the hood back.

 _I’m the thorns on the rose,_ she’d said. _I’m the thorns on the rose, and by God, do I sting._ Bald as an egg and spiny. She has quills, everywhere, long and thin and sharp, curved, and she’s beautiful, Darcy thinks for a moment, beautiful and alien, foreign and human. _Hybrid._ Her eyes gleam in the light from the camp.

“Look at me,” Raina says again. “You know what I am. You know what’s in me, what’s in Skye and Lincoln and everyone else here. You _know._ ”

“You’re hybrids,” Darcy says. “You’re all alien hybrids.”

“We’re inhuman,” says Raina, and she almost seems to caress the word. “We’re _the_ Inhumans.”

“But how—”

“Raina,” says a voice, and Raina’s mouth twists. _Crap. Damn._ Another woman, long sweeping robes and lovely hair and a wide face. Chinese, Darcy thinks. She looks at Darcy, and her lips thin out. “What the hell is happening here?”

 _Who the hell do I point my gun at now?_ “Depends,” Darcy says. “Who are you?”

The woman scoffs.

“Jiaying,” says Raina. If her voice was all honey before, it’s cyanide now. “I thought you would be with the Obelisk for another two days. Have you managed to free it early?”

“The Obelisk is none of your concern,” says Jiaying, sharply. “I’m more interested in why I come back after two weeks to find that my daughter’s in custody and there are _humans_ in the camp. What on earth have you been doing?”

“Things had to be dealt with,” Raina says. “You asked me to keep an eye on everything."

“I asked you to preserve the peace while I made the Obelisk ready for transport!”

Raina laughs, high-pitched. “None of this is _my_ fault. The Obelisk and what it does to this—this stupid human earth is what brought the government down on our heads. _I’m_ just cleaning up the mess.”

“Actually, I’m pretty sure you did do that,” Darcy says, and they both snap around to look at her. “When you leaked the footage of Dr. Simmons to Grant Ward.”

Raina actually hisses.

“Oh, Raina,” says Jiaying. She looks, for a split second, like Renaissance art, like the Virgin Mary, grieving, disappointed. “What have you done?”

“What you wouldn’t,” Raina spits.

Someone bangs very hard on the door of the storage building. She thinks it might have been Simmons. _Have to admire the woman’s guts._

“You can stop this,” Darcy says. She doesn’t lower the gun. “I don’t mean any harm to your people, all I want is the scientist.” _All I want is answers,_ but if she says that, God, it could get them all killed. “I just want the scientist, I just want Jemma Simmons, if you let her go—”

“I don’t negotiate with _humans_ ,” Jiaying says, and it’s cold, dismissive. A queen to a peon. Darcy shakes her head.

“You don’t have to kill her!”

Raina clasps her hands. “What she knows—she’s a threat to the existence of our people, Jiaying, if we let her go then we’ll never be able to become what we’re meant to be—”

Jiaying’s gaze snaps to Raina. “I told you, Raina, you only see what is _possible_ , not what _will_ happen—”

“You can’t know that!”

“Whatever comes, I’ll handle it.”

“Like you’ve been handling everything else,” Raina spits. “We ought to be _free_ , not running and hiding like animals in the woods—”

“You are not in control here.”

The door’s rattling. Darcy looks at it, and then at Raina and Jiaying, and— _neither of them have noticed._ She puts up her gun.

_Skye made the air vibrate._

“I can see what we need to do!” Raina shakes her head. “The secret’s _out_ , there’s no putting it back in the box again, we ought to take our place in the world, be proud—”

“I _will not_ put my people in jeopardy for the sake of your pride, Raina!”

“Gordon agrees with me!”

“Gordon is naïve and a fool if he does!”

The door rattles, again, and again, and there’s a high pitched whine in her ears—

“As soon as this is resolved,” Jiaying says, “we’re going to have a long talk about what constitutes your rights as a member of this community—”

“ _Get down,_ ” Darcy shouts, and flings herself at them, Raina and Jiaying both. Raina’s already pivoted out of the way of the door— _what will be,_ Raina had said, _what might be, meant to do things_ —but she hits Jiaying full on, knocking her to the earth just as the door explodes in a howling rush. The air pops. Shards of wood, bits of stone, and Jiaying’s a whirl of energy underneath her, her hands are on Darcy’s shoulders, and someone lets out a scream—

“Mom, _don’t—_ ”

“Get _off_ ,” Jiaying says, and shoves her away. Darcy lands on her back, and thinks, _Maybe this is a good place to chill for a bit._ Her head kind of hurts. Her ears are definitely ringing. _Goddamn. I’m in the wrong line of goddamn work, if people are blowing up doors with their brains._

She shuts her eyes for a moment. Her brain throbs. She can taste earth on her teeth.

— _a bridge, Darcy, we can build the Einstein-Rosen—_

Skye’s standing between her and Jiaying.

“You weren’t supposed to do that,” Raina says, and stares hard at Darcy. “You _weren’t._ ”

"Fate sucks," Darcy says, and shuts her eyes again. "Goddamn."

“Jesus, will you _stop_?” Skye says again. She’s panting hard. “Stop it. Stop _killing people_.”

A hand touches her shoulder. Bruised knuckles, long fingers. Murdock. Darcy catches it, and lets him pull her up. On his far side, Jemma Simmons has both hands over her mouth. Trip is there, too, and Dr. Frost, her face smeared with dirt, and all of them are staring at the trinity, Jiaying and Raina and Skye in a triangle of power in the middle of the village. The whole place, Darcy thinks, has come to an icy stop. The fire is finally, finally out.

“You know what humans will do,” Jiaying says. “You know what they’ll do to us, Skye, if they find us. I told you what happened to me, I told you about Whitehall, about what he did—”

“Simmons isn’t like that.” Skye’s voice breaks. “The people out there weren’t _like_ that, Mom. They were—they were good people, they were just researchers, they weren’t going to do _anything_ to us—”

“That’s rich,” Raina says. “For _you_ to talk about _us_ doing things to the researchers when _you_ killed Rodan.”

“ _I_ was defending myself.” Skye’s gone low, rolling and dangerous. “ _You_ brought Ward in. _You_ killed Jesse Rodan, you—you corrupted Gordon, you convinced Lincoln to kill the others—”

“I have nothing to do with what Lincoln did to the other scientists.” Raina folds her arms over her chest. “Ask your saintly mother about that one. All _I_ did was try to put us where we’re meant to be in this world.”

“You had your man _chip_ me,” Simmons says, and her voice is hard as stone. “You _tortured me_ to make sure I would never say anything. You’d have killed me if you’d thought you could get away with it.” 

“That was to protect us,” says Raina, and Jiaying puts her face in her hands.

“Raina, those chips are heirlooms, they’re not meant to be used—”

“Tell that to Scott Lang,” says Darcy.

“Who?” says Jiaying.

“It doesn’t _matter_ ,” says Raina. “That little _bitch_ has information that could destroy us!”

Skye’s voice cracks. “She _doesn’t have anything_!”

“Doesn’t she?” Raina’s ringing with triumph. “Haven’t you told her, Dr. Simmons? Haven’t you told the precious rose the truth about what you did?”

The air could crack into pieces with the look on Skye’s face.

“Jemma,” she says, hoarse. “Jemma, what is she talking about?”

“I didn’t mean anything by it.” Simmons is teary, red in the face. Panic curls off her like smoke. “I didn’t, Skye, I wasn’t going to show anyone, I _didn’t_ —”

“You _filmed_ her,” says Raina. “You filmed her practicing, little scientist, it was too much for you to watch, you _filmed_ your precious girlfriend practicing with her newly awakened gifts and you never, ever told her, did you?”

Skye almost staggers. “Jemma?”

“I only wanted—” Jemma shakes her head. “I was just—I wanted to calculate weight ratios, I couldn’t do it on the fly, I’m not—Skye, please—”

“Scientists can’t help themselves,” says Jiaying, in deep disgust.

“I feel like we were just dropped into the finale of some kind of season-long drama,” Murdock says, very quietly, and Darcy nearly gags on her own tongue.  

“I was going to delete it, Skye—Skye, look at me, please look at me, I was going to delete it and then it vanished, someone took the thumb drive, I don’t know where it went, I was going to delete it, I only had it for a few hours—”

“You could have _asked,_ ” says Skye in a horrible voice. “I would have said _okay_.”

“I just—you were already in the vlogs, I didn’t think it would matter, I wasn’t going to share it, and then—and then people came and started killing the others and I didn’t—”

Jiaying shakes her head. “Daisy—”

"Skye, I"m sorry—"

“They weren’t dangerous!” Skye’s hands are shaking, and around her, the air buzzes. Murdock clenches his hand tight around her elbow. There’s blood running down his face, like he’s been punched in the nose. Gordon’s nowhere to be seen. “No matter—no matter what Simmons did, she never would have hurt us, she _never_ would have released that footage, you _tortured_ her for nothing, Raina, she would _never_ have hurt us _—_ ”

“Like the other scientists never would have hurt you?” Raina croons. “Rodan tried to kill you, Daisy.”

“Only because Gordon attacked him first!”

"You can't know that!"

"I can!" 

"This little bitch scientist—"

"I  _trust her_ ," Skye says. "Jemma doesn't lie. Jemma  _doesn't_ lie. She's—she's really, really bad at it."

Simmons blinks, and starts to cry again in silence. Her mouth wobbles up into a smile. "Truly." 

“If the footage came out, sweetheart, it would destroy us all, you know that.” Jiaying holds out both hands. “We can fix this, just—can we talk about this, please—”

“Sounds like you _wanted_ all the information let out, Raina,” says Darcy. “What with leaking the psych ward video, and all. Why is Simmons’s footage so dangerous?”

Raina goes abruptly, startlingly silent.

“I’m guessing it’s because it doesn’t show you as overlords, does it?” Darcy shakes her head. “Shows you as what you are.”

“Inhuman _,_ ” Raina says.

“People,” Darcy replies. “As people. Just with special gifts.”

“ _We are more than that_.”

“Did you kill the other scientists?” Skye steps back. “Whitney, Cortez? Mom, did you have them killed?”

“All I did was tell Gordon to take a few people and make sure that the scientists wouldn’t bother us anymore.” Jiaying steps forward. “Lincoln said they were getting too close to finding the camp, that’s all, I didn’t know—”

“ _They died_ , Mom!”

“They _had to_ ,” says Raina. “If they didn’t, none of this would have come to pass, so many things, you have _no idea_ what’s been set in motion—”

“Oh, for God’s sake, _stop talking_ , for _once—_ ”

“Someone had to die,” Jiaying says. “To keep Afterlife safe. I’d rather it be humans than anyone here.”

Skye flinches back, and the windows in the dining hall explode.

“Skye,” says Simmons, in a soft, desperate voice, and Skye turns. When Jiaying takes a step forward, she raises a hand.

“Let us go, Mom,” she says.

Jiaying’s whole face twists into agony. “Daisy, sweetheart—”

“My friends are _dead_ ,” Skye says. “Raina—I don’t care about what Raina did, I don’t expect any better of Raina—”

Raina rolls her eyes.

“—but you _killed people_ , Mom. _Innocent_ people. You had them _killed_ —you had _Lincoln_ kill them, he wants to be a _doctor_ —”

“Scientists tore me to pieces!”

“ _Not these scientists_!”

Jiaying has nothing to say to that.

“And _you_.” Skye turns on Raina. “You _ever_ come near Simmons again, I will _kill you_.”

“A little late for that,” says Raina, and she makes a gesture with her hand, something that ought to have some effect, but there’s nothing. Raina jerks her head, makes the gesture again, like she’s pinching something and pulling it out of the air, but—silence.

“The thing about these Kree chips,” says Skye, and unfolds her hand from a fist to show off a tiny piece of metal. “Taking them out is just as easy as putting them in if you’re Awakened. Especially with—with what I can do.” She takes a breath. “Really shouldn’t have stuck me in there with her, Raina. For someone who can see the future it was just real damn stupid.” 

Raina’s lips part. She doesn’t seem to be able to speak.

“This is what’s going to happen.” Skye swallows hard. “Me, and Simmons, and these two agents and their people, we’re all walking out of here. Nobody’s touching us. We walk out, and you _leave them alone._ You’ve finished excavating the Obelisk, with my help. You can break camp, go somewhere no one will ever find you. I don’t want to know where.”

“Daisy—”

“No, Mom.” She takes a ragged breath. “I can wreck this whole place. You know I can. I can wreck this place and I can break the Obelisk and the crystals and there’ll never be another Awakening again. I can feel it already, and I know just how to crush it so it can never be repaired.”

Jiaying goes ghostly pale.

“So you _let us go_ ,” Skye says. “And if I hear anything, from _anybody_ , of _any_ of you coming near these people again, I will _destroy_ you.”

“But the footage—”

“I told you,” Simmons says. “It was stolen. I put it on a thumb drive to give to Skye, and six hours later it was gone. Someone took it. I don’t have it anymore. That was the only copy, I swear.”

“Like we can believe you,” says a voice from the crowd. “ _Human_.”

“Please,” says Simmons. “If I was going to lie, I’d come up with a much better one than that. Just—someone else would have to say it, because Skye's right, I’m bad at lying, I’m really quite terrible at it, actually, I’d probably faint—”

“Gasoline,” Frost says under her breath. “Fire.”

“Really not the time, Jem,” says Skye.

“I’m having an extreme adrenalic response and can’t be held responsible for that,” says Simmons.

“She’s not a liar,” Skye says, and backs up until Simmons can reach out and take her hand. “Anyone who says otherwise can talk to me, instead.”

Nobody dares.

“Get your people,” says Skye to Darcy. “We’re leaving.”

Next to her, Murdock stirs. “You think they’ll let us?”

“I’m kind of hoping they won’t notice I’m about to fall over,” says Skye, in a very quiet voice. “So we should book it.”

“Noted,” says Murdock.

Panic laces close around her heart. “But—”

“We’re not staying here,” Murdock says in her ear. “It’d be suicide.”

“But they’re—”

“Dr. Frost,” says Murdock. “Trip. Simmons. We need to _go_.”

 _But they’re alien,_ Darcy wants to say. _Alien tech, alien hybrids. Inhumans. They have the answers, they could know_ —

“Come on,” Skye says, and the crowd parts like the Red Sea. “Don’t follow us.”

“Wait,” Darcy blurts. There’s no chance, no chance in hell, but she has to _try_ , If they’re alien hybrids then she has to try, she _has_ to try. She’d never forgive herself if she didn’t try. “Wait, have you ever—have you ever heard of a woman called Jane Foster? Please—please tell me, I don’t—I’m looking for her, she’s about my height, a little shorter, she’s a scientist—”

“We don’t speak to humans,” says Jiaying, and turns her back on them.

Murdock hustles her out of the camp with his hand closed tight on her elbow.

.

.

.

Ward is gone when they get back. He’s taken one of the cars and left, his badge on the counter in the lounge. No note, no nothing. Just…gone. In a way, Matt thinks, it’s better. Worse, because if Ward’s still out there there’s no telling what he’ll do, but also better, because Dr. Simmons and Skye—“My name’s Daisy,” she says, “Daisy Johnson”—have wound around each other, fingers laced together into knots, and he really didn’t want to arrest either of them for murder. Simmons keeps staggering, and Daisy whispers in her ear on occasion, sweeping her thumb back and forth over Simmons’s knuckles as Frost asks questions none of them can really answer.

Daisy Johnson and Jemma Simmons vanish from police custody within a day of their return to Seattle. Simmons is declared AWOL from SHIELD, and all records of her existence are erased from the Lakewood Psychiatric Hospital. There is no trace of any single one of Daisy’s aliases, on the internet or off. Lincoln Campbell has vanished like smoke.

Lewis tells him at three in the morning the night before they’re due to fly back to DC, knocking on the door of his motel room and creeping in like a stray cat. She settles curled into the cheap armchair, knees up against her chest, and waits, as if she’s presented him with a dead animal and wants his critique. Matt folds his legs up underneath him on the mattress, and says, “Are you disappointed?”

“I have a feeling Daisy will turn up again.” Lewis snags the throw pillow off the other chair, presses it between her knees and her chest. “People like her tend to make a splash.”

“If they didn’t,” Matt says, “we’d be out of jobs.”

Her lips curl, just for a moment. Lewis turns, looks out the window for a bit. Somehow, the idea of shooing her out of his room so he can go to sleep never crosses his mind.

Matt hums. “You don’t get your answers with Daisy and Simmons gone,” he says. “All your theories—there’s no proof for any of them.”

“But they were hybrids, Murdock,” she says, very quietly. “All of them. Lincoln Campbell, Raina, whatever her last name was, Jiaying, Daisy Johnson. All of them. Alien-human hybrids. And whatever SHIELD was looking for out there, it—I think it must _awaken_ them, somehow. Give them their powers.”

"And it was what, just buried in the earth?"

"Or left there."

"By who?"

She whistles the theme from  _Close Encounters of the Third Kind._

“Something that excretes a poison shouldn’t be able to awaken anything,” he says. “Genetics doesn’t work like that.”

“Frost says it wasn’t carbon-based. What if it only poisons carbon-based life forms? What if the people it awakens have something different in the structure of their cells?”

He can’t help it. Matt sputters. “My undergrad-level biochem is kind of fuzzy, but I’m—pretty sure they’d have had a hard time developing in human wombs, if that were the case.”

“So what would the Obelisk be doing, then?”

He shrugs. “Exuding some kind of radiation poisoning. From the sound of it, Jiaying was a victim of _something_. All of it could simply be the—the results of some kind of experiment gone wrong. Whoever Whitehall is, I’m betting he had something to do with it.”

“I looked into him,” she says. “Nothing. No evidence the guy exists at all. He’s a ghost.”

“Either way,” Matt says. “We don’t have answers, not really. No more than we had at the start. We don't even know who gave you this file in the first place.”

“Mm.”

She looks at him for a bit.

“What?” says Matt. “Do I have something on my face?”

“Why is it so difficult for you to believe?” she says. “You’re your own kind of impossible. A man with extraordinary abilities and a…unique perspective on how to employ them. You’re just as different as Daisy is. What makes you so willing to dismiss the idea of the exceptional when you’re—the way you are?”

Matt doesn’t say anything, at least, not immediately. He turns away from her. The light from the window is casting curls of heat over her face. “I was an accident,” he says. “It was science that made me the way I am. A chemical that worked almost exactly the way it was supposed to. I’m rare, but I’m—I’m explicable. The same way mutations performed on single-celled organisms in a controlled laboratory are explicable. What you’re saying Daisy Johnson and Raina are, what you’re saying that—place was, when you say that—that Jemma Simmons was perceived as a threat to a race of alien-human hybrids—that’s completely fantastical. There’s no proof, just supposition.”

Lewis folds her arms and legs around the pillow again, watching him curiously. “But it fits.”

“So does an illegal experiment,” says Matt. “So does a cult with extensive genetic modification behind them. There are a lot of possibilities.”

She hums, and keeps on watching him.

Matt pushes his glasses up his forehead, rubs at his eyes. “I have a question.”

“Shoot.”

“Everything that’s happening here—there’s nothing to back it up. No evidence, no signed confession, no actual explanation. What we’ve seen—none of it’s answered any of our questions. So why are you so willing to believe?”

She presses her nose into the pillow. “If I don’t believe,” she says, “I don’t have anything left.”

Matt doesn’t say anything else, but there’s nothing else left to be said. Except, maybe, _who’s Jane Foster_. He keeps his mouth shut. Lewis stares at him for a minute or two longer, and then closes her eyes. He doesn’t kick her out of the room.

They’re back in DC by the time Matt hears about the camp being dismantled. “SHIELD cleaned up,” Jess says, “for once.”

“Trip and Dr. Frost?”

“Pretty sure they signed a million NDAs and wiped their asses with them.”

“And without the pithy humor?”

“Not a peep. From what I can tell, Frost has decided to stay in Lakewood. I’m pretty sure she’s content to forget the whole thing ever happened. Detective Triplett’s been hired by SHIELD, believe it or not. He’s out at the Academy, as of Monday.” Jess cracks her gum. “What the hell happened up there, Murdock?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

Jess hums. “I’m pregnant and bored, I can believe a lot.”

Matt opens his mouth, shuts it again. “I’ll tell you,” he says. “Eventually.”

“Yeah, whatever, man,” she says. “By the way, I talked to Coulson. He says he didn’t have a damn clue who Jemma Simmons is.”

He hangs up. Matt lifts his face to the ceiling, listening to the tramp of feet over the floors above. The bruises from the fight with Gordon ache, but he’d come out of it clean. Much cleaner than he could have. And there’s a bug on the ceiling fan of his new apartment.

Matt makes for the roof. It’s time, he thinks, to learn DC.

.

.

.

Three days later, Darcy walks in the front doors of the Bureau to find Sharon Carter waiting for her.

“Hey, it’s Groundhog Day.” Sharon falls into step beside her. “How are things?”

“You’re snooping.” Darcy checks her letterbox. “You could just ask straight out if you want to know something.”

“You never replied to my messages. I don’t like being worried.”

“ _Be nice to the new guy_? It didn’t even deserve a response, of course I didn’t reply. Since when do you tell people to be nice?”

“Hand asked for him special,” says Sharon, and smacks the back of her shoulder with her files. “Figure you might not want to chase him off.”

Hand’s watching them through the open door of her office. When she catches Darcy looking, she cocks an eyebrow, and then goes back to her paperwork.

“Right,” says Darcy, slowly. “How’d you hear that?”

“I know everything. Right—” She edges through her papers, yanks a file out from her stack. “Hand asked me to pass this on, by the way. Just came in this morning. Really hope you like Louisiana.”

“I’m fine with it, just depends on Murdock. What part?”

“New Orleans.” Sharon lifts her eyebrows. “You’ll like this one, Spooky. Smells like you. Graveyards and garlic to ward off the vampires.”

“Go to hell,” Darcy says, cheerfully.

“Only if you meet me there,” Sharon says, and walks away. “You owe me a sub, Lewis!”

“I owe you three!”

 _Hand,_ she thinks, watching the Assistant Director. _Hand and trees and unanswered questions._ And lies that don’t seem to be lies, after all.

“Problem, Agent Lewis?” says Hand, not looking up from her desk.

“No, ma’am,” says Darcy, and bolts for the basement.

Murdock’s already there. Darcy stops in the doorframe, and look at him for a second. _Game on._

“You’re staring,” Murdock says, without turning his head. “It’s creepy.”

“Haven’t you heard? That’s my raison d’etre.” She clips him in the back of the head with the file as she passes him. “New case just came in. You ready for the Crescent City?”

Murdock turns his face to her. He does this weird thing to let people know he’s paying attention where he tips his head the way a hawk or a cat does, and then leaves it cocked that way. He flips a pen between his fingers. “Depends. Are you going to force-feed me crayfish?”

“It’s _crawfish_ , you uncultured Yankee.” She flares the file at him. “Why did they stick you down here if you don’t even know that much?”

“I’m the only one crazy enough to try and keep up,” Murdock says, and there’s a small smile on her face when she drops down behind the desk opposite. “When are we leaving?”

.

.

.

The well-manicured man is the last to arrive at this particular meeting. He’d been informed too late, working with one of his assistants on an experiment, and he’d taken two taxis to get here in time. Still, he’s three minutes past the seven o’clock deadline when he stops in front of the secretary’s desk, and says, “Daniel Whitehall.”

“You’re expected,” says the secretary, and hits the button on the underside of her desk. The lock snaps open. “Please go ahead, Dr. Whitehall.”

The well-manicured man doesn’t reply as he slips through into the office. The other six are standing, waiting. Well, standing for the most part; the woman in white is seated, the man in the sharp suit standing just behind her chair with his hands braced over the back. The woman with blue eyes looks up at him as he enters. Her mouth twists. “Finally decided to join us, did you?”

“Some of us have to work for a living,” says the well-manicured man. “I didn’t anticipate we would all be together again for a month, yet.”

“That was before,” says the smoking man. He stubs out a cigarette in the ashtray. “I received some news today through irregular channels. It seems that one of your most cherished little experiments is…well. We can say she’s…causing trouble in the Pacific Northwest.”

The well-manicured man blinks. “I’ve no idea what you mean.”

“The woman Jiaying is alive,” says the woman with blue eyes. “You assured us she would not possibly be able to survive your final experiments, and yet she has.”

“It can’t still be alive,” says the well-manicured man, but his heart starts pounding. _If I could get it back, then maybe_ — “You’ve seen the photographs. Nothing could have survived that. No species on earth.”

“But Jiaying is not entirely of earth anymore, is she?” says the woman with blue eyes. The woman in white stands, and moves to the bookshelves again, long fingers tracing the spines. “What was it you called her, the Inhuman?”

“My assistants called it that,” says the well-manicured man. “The title is ridiculous. The thing was a hybrid, nothing more.”

“ _Is_ a hybrid,” says the man in the sharp suit. “And she seems to have been performing experiments of her own.”

“That’s impossible.”

The dark man stands, and begins to pace.

“Explain this, then,” says the smoking man. He offers a paper file. “Agents Lewis and Murdock have submitted their reports. Utterly unsubstantiated, of course. Impossible to verify. But they both claim to have uncovered a veritable nest of hybrids. Numbering at least forty. They call themselves Inhumans.”

“That’s _impossible,_ ” says the well-manicured man again. “That’s simply not possible. There isn’t any way to induce the transformation outside of the device we have in custody.”

“Apparently,” says the woman in white, “she found another one.”

“Then we burn them out.”

“The encampment is gone.” The man in the sharp suit leans back onto his heels. “As is the device SHIELD was searching for, the Obelisk. It may take years to find them again. The only fact we know for certain is that this comes from your failure to properly deal with your test subjects. _And_ —” he rests his palm to the shoulder of the woman in white, leaves it there. “—your relatively bad taste in subordinates.”

“I will not be blamed for Grant Ward’s mistakes,” says the well-manicured man. “He bungled the investigation before I even requested his involvement. His issues are his own.”

“He was supposed to observe the encampment,” says the woman with blue eyes. “Not make a deal with one of their lieutenants for the sake of one girl.”

“Ward will be punished.”

“Ward,” says the woman in white, “has vanished. Due to your bad management, we have one agent in the wind, and a video-tape that could destroy everything we’re trying to build in unknown hands.”

His throat tightens. “You will not punish me for this.”

“Too late,” says a voice, and then cold, sliding in beside his spinal column, cold burning. He smells it before he sees it, sharp and acidic, bubbling green against the carpet when he loses his balance, when his knees give way. The well-manicured man lies on his side, and when he looks up—because he can’t move, his limbs won’t obey him, he can’t breathe and his lungs are seizing in his chest—they’re all looking down at him in silence. The dark man holds a syringe between his fingers.

“Should’ve thought about the consequences before you made the mistake,” says the smoking man.

The well-manicured man can no longer hear him. 

.

.

.

In a parking lot in Salt Lake City, Raina uncurls her gloved fingers to study a USB stick. With it, she thinks, she can unseat Jiaying. With it, the Inhumans will be hers again.

“Where do we go?” Gordon says at her shoulder.

“Wherever we need to,” she says. “We have to get back home.”

.

.

.

.

.

.

_TRUST NO ONE_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And because I'm incapable of not making mixes for things: http://8tracks.com/shuofthewind/the-trashfiles-au
> 
> This one I fuss with a lot, so it may change from week to week. Sorry not sorry.
> 
> The sharp-eyed X-Phile will probably have worked this out, but this case was loosely based on not only the pilot, but also Ice (1.08), Darkness Falls (1.20), and Red Museum (2.10). The next one will be loosely based around the pilot (again), Conduit (1.04), and EBE (1.17), among others. 
> 
> I have everything roughly sketched out for this series, which is going to be thirteen fics long (I know, I'm dying too, but I already have over 100k of it as of now), but updates may be fairly random. Generally though I'm not going to post a case unless I'm done or within 10k of being done with writing that case, so updates should come really quick, one right after the other, when I _am_ posting. /shrugs Expect a great many gratuitous eighties music references, because I'm trashy.


End file.
